![]() They found that better sleep not only reduced the likelihood of developing clinical Alzheimer's disease, but it also reduced the development of tangle pathology in the brain - another substance that accumulates in Alzheimer's disease. One study from researchers in Toronto and Chicago examined people who were at increased genetic risk of developing Alzheimer's. ![]() The good news is that you can reduce your risk of developing dementia by getting adequate sleep. These substances then continue to accumulate, day after day, until they cause dementia. So the theory is, if you don't get enough sleep, your brain won't have enough time to drain away beta amyloid and other substances. This shrinking allows more space between the brain cells, so that beta amyloid and other substances that accumulate during the day can be flushed away. When we sleep, however, brain cells and their connections actually shrink. No one is completely certain what its normal function is, although there is increasing evidence it is involved in the brain's defense against invading microorganisms.ĭuring the day, we all make some of this beta amyloid protein in the brain. Beta amyloid is the protein that clusters and clumps together to form Alzheimer's plaques. Flush your brain while you sleepĪlthough it is not totally understood why inadequate sleep increases your dementia risk, one possible reason relates to the deposition of the Alzheimer's protein, beta amyloid. Was it really poor sleep that caused dementia, or just early dementia symptoms causing poor sleep? By looking at individuals who were initially studied in midlife - some as young as age 50 - we now have greater certainty that poor sleep can increase one's risk of developing dementia 25 years or more in the future. It had always been a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem when trying to interpret the relationship between poor sleep and dementia. This relationship between sleep in midlife and dementia in late life is important not only from a clinical perspective, but also from a scientific one. For example, if you're currently only sleeping four to five hours because you're up late working every night, you might want to change your habits, otherwise you risk developing dementia by the time you retire! ![]() Although not all of these are controllable, some are. There are many reasons for poor sleep in middle age: shift work, insomnia, caretaking responsibilities, anxiety, and pressing deadlines, just to name a few. ![]() What's new here is that inadequate sleep in midlife raises one's risk of dementia. Inadequate sleep in midlife may lead to dementia In addition, approximately half of the participants had their sleep duration measured objectively using a wearable accelerometer - a device that tracked their sleep using body movements - which confirmed the questionnaire data. This study controlled for sociodemographic, behavioral, cardiometabolic, and mental health factors, although most participants were white, better educated, and healthier than the general population. The mean age of dementia diagnosis was 77 years. In the second study, researchers in Europe (including France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland) examined data from almost 8,000 participants from a different study and found that consistently sleeping six hours or less at age 50, 60, and 70 was associated with a 30% increase in dementia risk compared to a normal sleep duration of seven hours. ![]() This study controlled for demographic characteristics including age, marital status, race, education, health conditions, and body weight. Researchers found that individuals who slept fewer than five hours per night were twice as likely to develop dementia, and twice as likely to die, compared to those who slept six to eight hours per night. In the first study, researchers at Harvard Medical School studied more than 2,800 individuals ages 65 and older participating in the National Health and Aging Trends Study to examine the relationship between their self-report of sleep characteristics in 2013 or 2014, and their development of dementia and/or death five years later. Although it has been known for some time that individuals with dementia frequently have poor, fragmented sleep, two new studies suggest that if you don't get enough sleep, you are at increased risk for dementia. But sleep isn't just good for your memory it can actually reduce your risk of dementia - and death. In a recent blog post I discussed how beneficial sleep is for memory function. ![]()
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