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Getting the right hours of sleep protects the brain as we age

2021-09-09T12:42:26.540Z


Sleeping too much, or too little, affects brain health as we age, according to a new study, so finding the perfect sleep spot for everyone is vital.


Sleep disruption associated with cognitive function 0:49

(CNN) -

The length of time older adults sleep could affect their brain health, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology.

According to the study authors, sleep interruptions are common in the elderly and are associated with changes in cognitive function, that is, in the mental capacity to learn, think, reason, solve problems, make decisions, remember and pay attention .

Age-related changes in sleep have also been linked to early signs of Alzheimer's disease, depression, and cardiovascular disease, so the authors investigated possible associations between the duration of sleep assessed by each person, the demographic and lifestyle factors, subjective and objective cognitive function, and beta amyloid levels of the participants.

If you sleep poorly, you have a higher risk of Alzheimer's 4:29

Little sleep affects the brain

Sleeping too little or too long could have a variety of effects on the brain health of older adults, the study suggested.

Study participants who reported a short sleep duration, defined in the study as six hours or less, had elevated levels of beta amyloid.

This "vastly increases" the risk of dementia, lead study author Joe Winer, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University in California, said by email.

This is in comparison to participants who reported normal sleep duration, which the study authors defined as seven to eight hours of sleep per night.

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Older adults with inadequate sleep also scored moderately to significantly worse on tests commonly used in older adults to assess cognitive abilities, such as orientation, attention, memory, language, and visual-spatial skills. and to identify mild dementia.

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Sleeping too much was also associated with lower executive function, but these people did not have elevated beta amyloid levels.

Participants who reported having slept a lot (nine hours or more) scored slightly worse on the number symbol substitution test than those who reported having slept normally.

For more than a century, this test has assessed associative learning skills by looking at test takers' ability to correctly match symbols to numbers based on a key on the page within 90 to 120 seconds.

"The main conclusion is that it is important to maintain a healthy sleep at the end of life," Winer said by email.

"In addition, both people who sleep little and those who sleep too much had higher (body mass index and) more depressive symptoms."

The findings suggest that short and long sleep could involve different underlying disease processes, Winer added.

What is beta amyloid

Amyloid beta or amyloid-beta is "a protein created during normal brain cell activity, although we are still not sure what its function is," Winer said.

"Amyloid-β is one of the first detectable markers in the progression of Alzheimer's disease, Winer said." In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid-β proteins begin to accumulate throughout the brain, sticking together in plaques.

Amyloid plaques are more likely to appear as we age, and many people with accumulated amyloid in the brain are still healthy.

About 30% of healthy 70-year-olds will have substantial amounts (of) amyloid plaques in their brain. "

When someone has Alzheimer's disease, the person's brain cells that retrieve, process and store information degenerate and die, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

The "amyloid hypothesis", one of the main theories about the culprit of this destruction, suggests that the accumulation of the protein could interrupt the communication between brain cells and end up killing them.

  • 21 Ways to Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer's, Backed by Research

Previous research has suggested "that sleep may help limit amyloid production in the brain and support the drainage system that removes it," said Laura Phipps, chief communications officer for Alzheimer's Research UK, who was not involved in the study, for email.

Amyloid-β can begin to accumulate many years before the obvious symptoms of Alzheimer's appear, Phipps added.

"This makes it difficult to separate cause and effect when studying sleep problems and Alzheimer's risk, especially if you only look at data from one point in time."

Sleep, depression, and demographics

The current study analyzed 4,417 participants with a mean age of 71.3 years, mostly white and from the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan.

Both the little sleep group and the heavy sleeper group reported more depressive symptoms than the normal sleep group.

The caffeine intake reported by the participants was not associated with the duration of sleep.

However, the more alcoholic beverages the participants drank per day, the more likely they were to sleep longer.

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There were also differences between genders, races and ethnicities: being a woman and having more years of education were significantly related to sleeping longer each night. And compared to white participants, who reported an average sleep duration of seven hours and nine minutes, Winer said that black or African-American participants reported an average sleep duration of 37.9 minutes less. Asian participants reported 27.3 fewer minutes than white participants, and white Hispanic or Latino participants reported 15 minutes less.

These findings suggest that sleep disparities could be associated with disparities in other aspects of life, such as cardiovascular and metabolic health, socioeconomic factors, and "racial discrimination and perceived racism" correlated with less sleep in previous studies, the authors wrote. authors.

Outstanding issues

"To better understand the order and direction of causality in these relationships, future research will have to build a picture of how sleep patterns, biological processes, and cognitive abilities change over longer periods of time," said Phipps.

"This new research comes from a large international study of cognitively healthy people, but relied on participants reporting the duration of their sleep rather than directly measuring it," he added.

"The researchers were unable to assess the quality of sleep or the time spent in the different stages of a sleep cycle, each of which may be an important factor in the link between sleep and cognitive health."

Sleep hygiene and its impact on health 1:30

It also remains controversial whether some cognitive domains are more affected by extreme sleep duration than other domains, the authors wrote.

Older adults concerned by these findings should consider sleep as important as diet and exercise to their health, Winer said.

"Although researchers continue to work to understand the complex relationship between sleep and our long-term cognitive health, high-quality sleep can be important to many aspects of our health and well-being," said Phipps.

"The best evidence suggests that seven to nine hours of sleep is optimal for most adults, and anyone who thinks their sleep patterns may be affecting their long-term health should speak to their doctor."

Sleep quality

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-09-09

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