Meditation improved sleep in older adults with mild memory decline

Poor sleep is common in older adults with mild cognitive impairment, and it is associated with further cognitive decline and reduced quality of life, which makes it more than a nuisance in this group. The standard response is often medication, despite ongoing safety concerns about sleep drugs in older people. Meditation-based practices have shown promise for sleep and psychological well-being in other populations, but the evidence in people with mild cognitive impairment specifically had never been pulled together. This review asked whether these drug-free programmes actually help this group sleep better.

The authors ran a systematic review following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, searching five databases through June 2025 for randomised trials, pilot trials and quasi-experimental studies that used validated sleep measures in adults aged 55 and over with mild cognitive impairment. Seven studies covering 434 people met the inclusion criteria. The interventions lasted 4 to 12 weeks and spanned mindfulness, mantra meditation, sound meditation and hybrid programmes. Six studies reporting a standard sleep quality questionnaire were pooled in a random-effects meta-analysis, and secondary psychological and cognitive outcomes were also examined.

Five of the seven studies showed significant improvements in subjective sleep quality, and the pooled analysis of six studies found a significant overall improvement, with an effect of -0.75 on the standardised scale used, though the studies varied substantially in their results. One study using wrist-worn activity monitoring reported reduced daytime napping rather than a change in the questionnaire measures. Beyond sleep, the interventions were linked to reduced anxiety, stress and depression, and to improved attention and memory. The authors judged the overall evidence to carry moderate certainty.

Meditation has an established track record for subjective sleep in other groups, but this is a population where evidence had been notably limited, so the review extends rather than merely confirms the field. The moderate-to-large pooled effect is encouraging, yet the small number of studies, the mix of designs including some without random assignment, and the heavy reliance on self-reported sleep all temper confidence. The authors call for larger multi-site randomised trials with standardised protocols that measure sleep both objectively and subjectively before firm conclusions can be drawn.

For anyone thinking about later-life sleep, or supporting an older relative with early memory changes, this is a reason to see meditation-based practice as a credible drug-free candidate rather than wishful thinking. The improvements extended beyond sleep to anxiety, stress, depression, attention and memory, which suggests broad rather than narrow benefit in this group. That said, the evidence base is small and inconsistent, and most of the measured benefit was in how people felt they slept rather than in objectively recorded sleep.