Doing this at night leads to a 45% greater Risk of Dementia

Sleep, our health, our longevity and our Healthspan are all, without question, intrinsically connected. Researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital have explored the connection between sleep disturbances and deficiencies among older adults and risk of dementia and death. They found that the risk of dementia was double among those participants who reported getting less than 5 hours of sleep a night. This was when compared to those who reported getting between 7 and 8 hours of sleep per night.

The team also found associations between sleep disturbance and sleep deficiency with overall risk of death. Lead author, Rebecca Robbins PhD, of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders said, “Our findings illuminate a connection between sleep deficiency, risk of dementia, & confirm the importance of efforts to help older individuals obtain sufficient sleep each night.”

To investigate the connection between quality & quantity of sleep and risk of dementia and death, Dr. Robbins and colleagues used nationally representative data collected from older adults participating in the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). This is a longitudinal study of Medicare beneficiaries who were 65 years and older. Survey data from NHATS participants has been collected annually since 2011. 2,610 participants answered sleep questionnaires in 2013 and 2014.

The researchers examined their answers about several characteristics of sleep disturbance and deficiency, including alertness, nap frequency, how long it took participants to fall asleep, their sleep quality, this being defined as good, very good, fair, poor and very poor), they also checked sleep duration and snoring. They also collected information (from health care proxies as needed) about patient outcomes such as dementia and death from any cause for up to 5 years after the survey.

Overall, they found a strong relationship between several sleep disturbances and deficiency variables, and incident dementia over time. They found that routinely taking 30 minutes or longer to fall asleep was associated with a 45% greater risk for incident dementia. Also, that routinely having trouble in maintaining alertness, routinely napping, reporting poor sleep quality, and sleeping 5 or less hours per night was also associated with increased risk of death. Senior author of the study Charles Czeisler, MD; Chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders said, “This prospective study reveals that sleep deficiency at baseline, when the average age of participants was 76 years old was associated with double the risk of incident dementia and all-cause mortality over the next 4 to 5 years. These data add to the evidence that sleep is important for brain health & highlight the need for further research on the efficacy of improving sleep and treating sleep disorders on the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and mortality.”

The authors called for further study of the causal relationship between sleep & dementia & death, as insights may lead to new ways in which to view sleep among older adults.

Second author of the study, Stuart Quan MD, also from the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders said, “Our study demonstrates that very short sleep durations and poor-quality sleep in the elderly increases the risk of developing dementia and earlier death. There should be increased focus on obtaining healthy sleep-in older adults.”

If you follow My Longevity Experiment consistently on YouTube you will know that I post my sleep scores in the community tab of my YouTube channel, and that my overall sleep is, more often than not, between 7 & 8 hours per night.