If you sleep less than 6 hours a night in middle age, you increase the risk of dementia by 30%

If you sleep less than 6 hours a night in middle age, you increase the risk of dementia by 30%

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After following nearly 8,000 people for 25 years, the study found a greater risk of dementia with a “sleep duration of six hours or less between the ages of 50 and 60” compared to those who slept seven hours a night .

In addition, persistent short sleep duration between the ages of 50, 60, and 70 was also associated with a “30% increased dementia risk,” independent of “sociodemographic, behavioral, cardiometabolic, and mental health factors,” including depression, the study said.

“Sleep is important for normal brain function and is also considered important for clearing toxic proteins that build up in dementia from the brain,” said Tara Spiers-Jones. She is deputy director of the Center for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in a statement. Spiers-Jones was not involved in the study.

“What is the message for all of us? Evidence of sleep disorders can occur long before the onset of other clinical evidence of dementia,” said Tom Dening, who heads the Center for Dementia at the Institute of Mental Health at the University. of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, in a statement.

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“However, this study cannot determine cause and effect,” said Denning, who was not involved in the study. “Maybe it’s just a very early sign of dementia coming, but it’s also very likely that poor sleep is not good for the brain and leaves it vulnerable to neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.”

Chicken or egg?

It is well known that people with Alzheimer’s suffer from sleep problems. In fact, insomnia, wandering at night, and daytime sleepiness are common in people with Alzheimer’s, as well as other cognitive disorders such as Lewy body dementia and frontal lobe dementia.
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But poor sleep leads to dementia – and which comes first? According to neuroscientist Jeffrey Iliff, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, this ‘chicken-and-egg’ question has been investigated in previous studies, with both directions.

“In experimental studies, there appears to be evidence of both chicken and egg,” Iliff told CNN in a previous interview. “You can drive it in any direction.”

However, some recent studies have investigated the damage that sleep deprivation can cause.

People who have less REM, or sleep in a dream stage, have a higher risk of developing dementia, one study from 2017 found. REM is the fifth stage of sleep, when the eyes move, the body warms up, breathing and pulse accelerate and the mind dreams.
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Healthy middle-aged adults who slept poorly just one night produced an abundance of beta-amyloid plaques – one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, another study published in 2017 revealed. Beta-amyloid is a sticky protein compound that disrupts communication between brain cells and eventually kills the cells as they accumulate in the brain.

The study found that a week of disrupted sleep increased the amount of tau, another protein responsible for the clutter associated with Alzheimer’s, frontal lobe dementia and Lewy body.

Another 2017 study compared dementia markers in spinal fluid with self-reported sleep problems, and found that subjects with sleep problems were more likely to show evidence of pathology, brain damage and inflammation, even when other factors such as depression, body mass, cardiovascular disease and sleeping pills were taken into account.
Losing one night may increase the risk factor for Alzheimer's, the study says
“Our findings are consistent with the idea that poorer sleep may contribute to the accumulation of Alzheimer’s-related proteins in the brain,” Barbara Bendlin of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center told CNN in a previous interview about the 2017 study.

“The fact that we can find these effects in people who are cognitively healthy and close to middle age suggests that these relationships appear early, potentially providing an opportunity for intervention,” Bendlin said.

‘New information’ about sleep deprivation

Because the new study followed a large population over a long period of time, it adds ‘new information to the emerging picture’ about the link between sleep deprivation and dementia, said Elizabeth Coulthard, associate professor of dementia neurology at the University of Bristol. . the United Kingdom, in a statement.

“This means that at least some of the people who had dementia probably did not have it at the beginning of the study when their sleep was first assessed,” said Coulthard, who was not involved in the study.

“This reinforces the evidence that poor sleep in middle age can cause or worsen dementia later,” she said.

At present, science has no ‘fixed way to prevent dementia’, but people can change certain behaviors to reduce their risk, said Sara Imarisio, head of strategic initiatives at Alzheimer’s Research UK. Imarisio was not involved in the study.

“The best evidence suggests that not just smoking, just drinking moderately, staying mentally and physically active, eating a balanced diet and keeping cholesterol and blood pressure levels in check, to keep our brains healthy as we get older.”

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