2024-01-09 09:54:36
Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – A new study shows that people who suffer from a lot of interrupted sleep in their 30s and 40s are twice as likely to have problems with memory and thinking, a decade later.
The research was published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, on Wednesday.
In the early 2000s, researchers tracked the sleep quality of hundreds of people through two overnight visits regarding a year apart, obtaining a total of six nights of sleep per person. Sleep quality was assessed using a wrist activity monitor that tracks the amount of sleep people got during periods of movement to measure sleep fragmentation, or short, frequent sleep interruptions. Participants were regarding 40 years old, on average, at this stage of the study.
More than a decade later, between 2015 and 2016, researchers analyzed the cognitive ability of 526 of the same participants through standardized interviews and tests of cognitive ability, including processing speed, executive function, memory and fluency. On average, study participants found they slept regarding six hours each night, and regarding a fifth of their sleep time was interrupted.
Overall, people who had fragmented sleep, or spent a greater portion of their sleep hours moving, were more likely to have poorer cognitive scores on all tests.
The study found that among 175 people with more sleep disturbances, 44 had poorer cognitive performance following 10 years, compared to 10 of 176 people with fewer sleep disturbances.
People who slept less or had higher interrupted sleep were significantly more likely to be male, black, have a higher body mass index, and a history of depression or high blood pressure.
Due to the small sample size, researchers were unable to fully investigate potential racial or gender differences. But following adjusting for health and other demographic factors, they found that those with the most disturbed sleep were twice as likely to have worse-than-average scores on a battery of cognitive tests, compared to those with the least disturbed sleep.
Study author Dr. Yue Ling said, “Given that signs of Alzheimer’s disease begin to accumulate in the brain several decades before symptoms appear, understanding the relationship between sleep and cognition early in life is crucial to understanding the role of sleep problems as a risk factor for the disease.” .
Throughout the study, participants were also asked to keep a sleep diary, track bedtimes and wake times, and rate their sleep quality, Ling, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, explained in a press release. However, objective measures of sleep duration and subjective assessments of sleep quality were not associated with cognition in midlife.
“Our findings suggest that sleep quality, not quantity, is most important for cognitive health in midlife,” Ling said.
People are supposed to sleep between 7 and 10 hours each night, depending on their age. However, the US Centers for Disease Control and Control explained that one in three Americans does not get enough sleep.
Between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, insomnia, and restless leg syndrome that can disrupt your night’s sleep. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers this condition a “public health problem,” because disrupted sleep is associated with an increased risk of conditions such as diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and dementia.
One study conducted in 2021 found that people who routinely reported having difficulty sleeping had a 49% increased risk of developing dementia, while those who often woke up at night and had difficulty returning to sleep were more likely to develop dementia. Dementia by 39%.
A study published in October found that chronic loss of slow-wave sleep, the third stage of sleep during which the body removes unwanted or potentially harmful substances from the brain, may increase the risk of dementia.
“More research is needed to evaluate the relationship between sleep disturbances and cognition at different stages of life and to determine whether critical life periods exist when sleep is most strongly associated with cognition,” Ling said.
“Future studies might open new opportunities for preventing Alzheimer’s disease later in life,” he concluded.
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