Lack of sleep tends to make all of us feel fuzzy-headed and slightly out of it. But it can be more serious than that. A new study reports that older people who don’t sleep well could have higher chance of developing dementia, according to The New York Times.
Researchers studied 167 men who underwent sleep tests in 1999 and died by 2010. The study, in Neurology, recorded sleep duration, periods of waking up and episodes of apnea, and used pulse oximetry to measure oxygen saturation of their blood.
On autopsy, they found that those in the highest one-quarter for duration of sleep at oxygen saturation of less than 95 percent were almost four times as likely to have higher levels microinfarcts, small areas of dead tissue caused by deprivation of blood supply, as those in the lowest one-quarter.
People in the highest 25 percent of duration of deep sleep were about a third as likely to have high levels of brain atrophy, compared to those in the lowest 25 percent.
“Prior studies have shown an association between certain types of sleep disturbance and dementia,” said the lead author, Dr. Rebecca P. Gelber, an epidemiologist with the Veterans Administration in Hawaii. “These lesions may help explain the association.”
[Photo from flickr user Shahrashoob]
