Lack of Sleep Can Cause Alzheimer’s Disease
Lack of sleep can cause adverse effects more than just feeling tired. It can even trigger erectile dysfunction. Well, one other adverse effects of lacking in sleep is the emergence of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer disease it self is not contagious, but a similar syndrome with apoptosis of brain cells at the same time, so that the brain seems to shrink. Alzheimer’s disease is also said to be synonymous with being old. Alzheimer’s can actually be predicted by blood test.
Researchers from the Faculty of Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis, monitored the sleep patterns of 100 healthy people aged 45-80 years old with half of them have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease.
From the results of the study, researchers found that those who wake up more than five times in one hour is more likely to have an accumulation of amyloid plaques than those with fewer sleep disturbances.
Amyloid protein plaques is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, a condition that affects at least 5.4 million Americans. This disease robs patients’ memory and reasoning ability. These characteristics can be detected by brain scans and spinal fluid tests and may appear before the symptoms of Alzheimer’s starts.
Studies show that 25 percent of participants had preclinical indicator of Alzheimer’s disease and researchers found that people who sleep less tend to have more efficient indicator for the early stages of Alzheimer’s than those who sleep without interruption.
While the average time spent in bed is about eight hours, the time average of only 6.5 hours of sleep because they wake up at night. People who spend less than 85 percent of their time in bed actually are more likely to have the characteristics of Alzheimer’s.
“We’re beginning to see the duration of sleep, but it seems the quality of sleep is more important for this association relationship (quality of sleep and Alzheimer’s disease),” said Dr. Yo-El Ju, researcher and assistant professor in neurology. “We do not know if initially Alzheimer’s causes lack of sleep or vice versa,” he continued. The results of this study will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in April in New Orleans.
Tagged with: Alzheimer's Disease, Lack Of Sleep,
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