United States: According to new research, if you are in your 40s and more and are struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep, this does not bode well for your brain as you grow older.
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According to Clémence Cavaillès, the study lead author from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), “Our study, which used brain scans to determine participants’ brain age, suggests that poor sleep is linked to nearly three years of additional brain aging as early as middle age,” US News reported.
The research was sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and was published on October 23 in the journal Neurology.
How was the study conducted?
The UCSF team set their target to the 589 participants who were approximately 40 years of age at the start of the study. Participants completed sleep diaries at 40 years and again at approximately 45 years.
Survey replies led the researchers to draw up six poor sleep characteristics:
- short sleep duration
- bad sleep quality
- difficulty falling asleep
- difficulty staying asleep
- early morning awakening
- daytime sleepiness
All volunteers were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging at about 55 years old to determine how their brains were aging.
In effect, the analysis led by Cavaillès showed that participants with four or more of the poor sleep characteristics of the kind described above had brains that were about 2.6 years older on average than the brains of people free from three or more of these characteristics.
For persons with 2 or 3 of the bad sleep characteristics, brains were estimated to be, on average, 1.6 years older by age 55 compared to persons with no or only one of the bad sleep characteristics.
However, the study conducted has limited the findings to mere coincidences; therefore, it cannot be emphatic that poor sleep causes aging of the brain.
According to Dr. Kristine Yaffe, vice chair of research in psychiatry at UCSF, who is also one of the authors, “Our findings highlight the importance of addressing sleep problems earlier in life to preserve brain health, including maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, exercising, avoiding caffeine and alcohol before going to bed and using relaxation techniques,” US News reported.
“Future research should focus on finding new ways to improve sleep quality and investigating the long-term impact of sleep on brain health in younger people,” she added.