Three specific sleep problems are associated with an increased risk of dementia, according to a new study. This issue once again emphasizes the importance of sleep quality on our health and well-being.
According to ScienceAlertResearch by researchers shows that the use of sleeping pills and the inability to fall asleep quickly (sleep-onset insomnia) are associated with an increased risk of developing dementia over a 10-year period; While the inability to go back to sleep after waking up during the night is associated with a reduced risk of dementia.
The findings of the new study are worth noting; Because this is the first study to examine the relationship between dementia risk and long-term sleep disturbances among a cohort of older US adults. The findings of the study are consistent with the results of examining smaller samples, and this issue makes its findings valuable.
“After reading the available scientific literature, I was surprised to see different findings regarding the relationship between sleep and dementia,” says Roger Wang, a public health scientist at the State University of Medicine of New York. So I decided to look into this.
“We expected that sleep-onset insomnia and the use of hypnotics would increase the risk of dementia,” Wang added. “But we were surprised to find that not being able to go back to sleep after waking up reduced the risk of dementia.”
In their review, the researchers examined ten years of data from a long-term study called the National Health and Aging Study (NHATS); Specifically, data related to 6,248 adults over 65 years of age who lived in the community and were not diagnosed with dementia at the start of the study.
According to this study, people who suffered from sleep-onset insomnia were 51% more likely to develop dementia than others. According to the researchers, this growth decreased after taking into account socio-demographic and health factors and reached a point where it was no longer statistically significant.
Sleep medications were placed after socio-demographic factors and before health factors and increased the risk of dementia by 30%. It should be noted that the recent findings do not mean that sleep disorders are the determining factor for people suffering from dementia; Rather, these findings indicate the existence of a relationship between different sleep disorders and dementia, and other factors that change this relationship should also be investigated for a definitive conclusion.
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