The following is from an article in the Medical news Today and was
written by Ana Sandoiu for the full article go here
For this study, a large number of adults enrolled in the
Framingham Heart Study ( were asked to report how long they usually slept per
night. The researchers then clinically followed the participants for 10 years
to see who developed Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers then
examined the data collected on sleep duration and calculated the risk of
developing dementia.
The team found that people who sleep regularly for 9 hours or more
were twice
as likely to develop Alzheimer's within 10 years, compared with those who
consistently slept less than 9 hours.
Additionally, as the study's lead author explains, education seems
to be playing a role in staving off the risk of dementia.
"Participants without a high school degree who sleep for more
than 9 hours each night had six times the risk of developing dementia in 10
years as compared [with] participants who slept for less. These results suggest
that being highly educated may protect against dementia in the presence of long
sleep duration." Dr. Sudha Seshadri
The study also found that people who slept longer seemed to have
smaller brain volumes. Being observational, the study cannot establish
causality, but the researchers suspect excessive sleep is probably a symptom
rather than a cause of the neuronal changes that come with dementia. As a
consequence, they speculate, reducing sleep duration is not likely to lower the
risk of dementia.
The authors believe the findings may inform future dementia and
cognitive impairment detection practices. Co-corresponding author Matthew Pase,
Ph.D., who is a fellow in the department of neurology at BUSM and investigator
at the FHS, weighs in on the significance of the findings.
"Self-reported sleep duration may be a useful clinical tool
to help predict persons at risk of progressing to clinical dementia within 10
years," he says. "Persons reporting long sleep time may warrant
assessment and monitoring for problems with thinking and memory."
The sooner a patient is diagnosed with dementia, the more time
they and their families have to plan ahead and make crucial healthcare
decisions.
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