2023-08-19 10:11:16
“Reducing the risk of dementia by 40%”… Insomnia, inability to fall asleep within 30 minutes of going to bed, risk 50% ↑
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In general, insomnia is known to increase the risk of dementia. There are also several types of insomnia. One of them is insomnia, which makes it difficult to fall back asleep once you fall asleep and wake up to the sound of rustling next to you. However, a unique study found that insomnia lowers the risk of dementia. [사진=게티이미지뱅크]Insomnia, the type of insomnia in which you can’t fall asleep within 30 minutes of bedtime (sleep onset insomnia) and taking some sleeping pills increase the risk of dementia, while insomnia, the type of insomnia that makes it difficult to fall back to sleep once you wake up (sleep maintenance insomnia) actually lowers the risk of dementia.
This is the result of an analysis of 10 years of data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) by a research team at the School of Medicine at the State University of New York in the United States.
According to the research team, insomnia can be divided into two major categories: ‘sleep onset insomnia’ and ‘sleep maintenance insomnia’, in which it is difficult to fall back to sleep once a person wakes up due to the need to defecate or urinate or disturb others. In addition, there is a type of insomnia where you wake up frequently from sleep, wake up too early, or continue to be sleepy even following getting enough sleep.
Assistant Professor Roger Wing (Public Health and Preventive Medicine), lead author of the study, said, “I was surprised to find that ‘sleep maintenance insomnia’ lowered the risk of dementia.” He added, “I started the study because I was worried regarding my father, who is suffering from chronic sleep disorders following the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Sleep maintenance insomnia, why it lowers the risk of dementia… Additional research is needed to identify the mechanism
According to the results of previous studies, REM sleep, sleep deprivation (less than 5 hours of sleep), and benzodiazepine, a drug prescribed for patients with insomnia and depression as a tranquilizer, decrease cognition. It is also well known that ‘sleep onset insomnia’, which has the most patients, can be the cause of dementia. However, little is known regarding the association between ‘sleep maintenance insomnia’ and the risk of dementia.
The research team examined data from 2011 to 2020 of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), which targeted 30.38 million Medicare beneficiaries, which provide health insurance benefits to people aged 65 and older in the United States. About 13.6% of the participants (average age 76.3 years, 55.5% female) were diagnosed with dementia during this period. The average duration of dementia diagnosis was 2.9 years. In 2011, the research team conducted a survey of 6,284 people who had not been diagnosed with dementia.
As a result of the study, it was found that ‘sleep-onset insomnia’ might increase the risk of dementia by 51%, and the use of sleeping pills might increase the risk of dementia by 30%. On the other hand, ‘sleep maintenance insomnia’ turned out to be able to lower the risk of dementia by 40%. The former is the result of not adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, and the latter is the result of adjusting for it.
This is an observational study and does not prove a causal relationship. The research team said, “Further research is needed to find out why sleep maintenance insomnia actually lowers the risk of dementia.”
The findings (Sleep Disturbances and Dementia Risk in Older Adults: Findings from 10 Years of National US Prospective Data) were published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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