Are you over 100 years old and not getting enough sleep every day? Beware of dementia. A European study pointed out that after tracking thousands of middle-aged people over the age of 50, it was found that those who slept less than six hours a day had a higher chance of developing dementia when they were nearly 80 years old.
“The New York Times reported on the 20th that for many years, researchers have been unable to conclude the relationship between sleep and cognitive decline because it is difficult to determine whether sleep deprivation is a symptom of brain changes that cause dementia. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications on the 20th, illustrates some of the most convincing findings to date, showing that people who get “normal sleep” for six hours or less per day during their 50s and 60s People who slept six hours or less per day during their 50s and 60s were 30% more likely to be diagnosed with dementia as they approached their 80s than those who slept a full seven hours on a regular basis.
Kristine Yaffe, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, said, “It’s really very unlikely that such a sleep pattern was a symptom of dementia 30 years ago, so this study is very good at providing strong evidence that sleep is indeed a (dementia) risk factor. “
University College London, University of Paris researchers from the British “Whitehall II Study” (Whitehall II Study) to obtain the medical records of nearly 8,000 British civil servants, from the age of 50 to track, from 1985 to 2016, after 25 years of tracking, the study ended with 521 people had been diagnosed with dementia at an average age of 77.
Séverine Sabia, first author of the study and a professor at University College London, said the study adjusted for several risk factors that could affect sleep patterns and the development of dementia, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity levels. The study also distinguished between people with mental illnesses such as depression before age 65 and those without such mental illnesses. Gender differences did not show an effect.
It is known that 15 to 20 years prior to the onset of memory and thinking problems in Alzheimer’s patients, their brains have begun to show pre-dementia changes, such as abnormal amyloid accumulation, and sleep patterns during this period are thought to be an effect of dementia.
Erik Musiek, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said it’s a question of whether the chicken or the egg came first, and he’s not sure the new study concludes the causal relationship, but it’s closer because many of the study subjects were relatively young.
Recent Comments