Insomnia has been linked to Alzheimer’s
Bad news for insomniacs – a new study has found a worrying link between poor quality sleep and a heightened risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Research examined the relationship between sleep quality and Alzheimer’s biomarkers in a group of 101 subjects with an average age of 63. They concluded that poor sleep quality, sleeping problems and grogginess during the day were linked to increased indicators of the disease.
It’s not known for certain why this may be, but studies in animals have found that the brain’s ability to clear toxins like beta amyloid (the plaque-forming protein found in Alzheimer’s sufferers) improves.
All participants had known risk factors for the disease, including family history or presence of the APOE gene, believed to be associated with a higher risk. They each rated the amount of sleep they got, the quality of that sleep, any troubles they had staying asleep and any sleepiness they may have experienced during the daytime.
“Not everyone with sleep problems is destined to develop Alzheimer’s disease,” Barbara Bendlin of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre and senior author of the paper told the New York Times. “We’re looking at groups of people, and over the whole group we find the association of poor sleep with the markers of Alzheimer’s. But when you look at individuals, not everyone shows that pattern.”
However, if you’re tempted to turn to sleeping pills, Bendlin warns against it. “We don’t yet know if sleep medication has an effect on amyloid,” she told the Huffington Post. “The next step will be to further query these relationships using objective sleep measures.”