Middle-aged adults and seniors would age more gracefully -- and save a few bucks -- if they lay off prescription sleep medications, a new study says.
Avoiding sleep drugs would reduce older Americans' lifetime rate of falls by nearly 9% and brain decline by 2%, researchers report in the upcoming December issue of The Lancet Regional Health-Americas.
It also would increase life expectancy by more than a month and save folks thousands of dollars, researchers said.
"Our results show reducing use of sleep medications could help older adults live healthier lives with fewer limitations," lead researcher Hanke Heun-Johnson, a research scientist at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, said in a news release.
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