It’s been reported that there is a specific stage of sleep that is able to reduce the risk of dementia. Check out the latest reports about the matter below.
There is a vital stage of sleep for brain’s health
As you age, the risk of developing dementia increases if you do not get enough slow-wave sleep.
A new study has found that individuals over the age of 60 are 27 percent more likely to develop dementia if they lose just 1 percent of this deep sleep each year. Slow-wave sleep is the third stage of a human’s 90-minute sleep cycle, lasting about 20-40 minutes.
During this stage, brain waves, heart rate and blood pressure slow down, making it the most restful stage of sleep. Deep sleep helps to strengthen our muscles, bones, and immune system, as well as prepare our brains to absorb more information.
Recent research has also shown that individuals with Alzheimer’s-related changes in their brains perform better on memory tests when they get more slow-wave sleep.
“Slow-wave sleep, or deep sleep, supports the aging brain in many ways, and we know that sleep augments the clearance of metabolic waste from the brain, including facilitating the clearance of proteins that aggregate in Alzheimer’s disease,” says neuroscientist Matthew Pase from Monash University in Australia.
“However, to date we have been unsure of the role of slow-wave sleep in the development of dementia. Our findings suggest that slow-wave sleep loss may be a modifiable dementia risk factor.”
The study conducted by Pase and colleagues from Australia, Canada, and the US analyzed 346 participants of the Framington Heart Study.
These participants had undergone two overnight sleep studies between 1995-98 and 2001-03. The testing period spanned an average of five years.
The study aimed to examine the correlation between two factors over time. The participants were community-based and over 60 years old in 2020.
None of them had any history of dementia during the 2001-2003 study.
By comparing the datasets from the two in-depth polysomnography sleep studies and then monitoring participants until 2018, the researchers were able to investigate the link between the two factors and dementia.
Low levels of slow-wave sleep were linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, taking medications that can impact sleep, and having the APOE ε4 gene, which is linked to Alzheimer’s.
“We found that a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, but not brain volume, was associated with accelerated declines in slow wave sleep,” Pase says.
Check out the complete article from Science Alert.
