Sleep Link to Dementia REVEALED (NOT What You Think)
I have an exercise I’d like you to try. Or a “thought experiment,” as Einstein liked to call them.
The next time you’re with a group of seniors, look around. Visualize a big red letter “D” on the forehead of every third person. Now imagine all the marked people dying with some form of dementia.
What if I told you that the exercise was real?
Because statistically speaking, that’s exactly what will happen here in the real world – one out of every three folks will develop dementia.
It’s a terrifyingly high number. And with no cure in sight, all signs point to it worsening before it improves.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s a lot of excellent research going on. And I’m hopeful an Alzheimer’s cure will be found in my lifetime.
In the meantime, our best bet is to learn how to spot the disease as early as possible. Then we can throw on the brakes.
Lucky for us research has already identified one of the FIRST signs. And when you learn how to spot dementia in its earliest stages, you can take steps to slow it down to a crawl.
(I’ll share some tips to help you do precisely that!)
We know there’s a link between lack of sleep and Alzheimer’s. Several studies have made the connection.
But one study stands out from the crowd. Because instead of focusing on sleep quantity, it looked at sleep quality — specifically deep sleep.
Deep sleep, or slow-wave sleep, is a deceptively busy time. You LOOK zonked out, but your brain is super busy consolidating memories and experiences. Getting enough deep sleep is vital to ensure you wake up feeling energized and refreshed.
Researchers recruited 119 volunteers with either no cognitive problems or mild cognitive impairment for the study.
Next, they tracked how many hours the participants slept, monitored their brain waves using an EEG, and measured their levels of tau build-up. Tau is a protein in the brain that’s associated with brain damage, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Folks who didn’t get enough SLOW-WAVE sleep had higher levels of tau. But surprisingly, LACK OF SLEEP alone wasn’t connected to increases in tau, just lack of deep sleep.
In other words, when it comes to sleep QUALITY is more important than QUANTITY.
Of course, it’s easy to know when you’re not getting enough sleep. But how do you know if you’re getting enough DEEP sleep?
Following are five tell-tale signs that you’re not:
- You wake up feeling groggy.
- You’re tired all the time.
- You’re experiencing brain fog.
- You feel more irritable than usual.
- You crave foods high in fat and sugar.
If you suspect you’re not getting enough deep sleep, consider getting tested for Alzheimer’s.
To improve your deep sleep, avoid blue light at night (from electronic screens), stick to the same bedtime, avoid big meals before hitting the hay, and consider sleeping in a cooler room (about 67 degrees).
P.S. Poor sleep can contribute to every major health problem you can think of… high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, stroke… you name it. THIS simple fix can make a dramatic difference in how much sleep you get—while boosting the QUALITY of that sleep at the same time. Click for all the details.
Source:
“Reduced non-rapid eye movement sleep is associated with tau pathology in early Alzheimer’s disease.” Science Translational Medicine, Jan. 9, 2019 DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aau6550
