30th suggests that the sleep time of the elderly may affect the health of the brain. In order to protect the brain, it is necessary to find the best sleep time.
According to the author of the paper, sleep disturbance is a common phenomenon in advanced age, and it is pointed out that it is related to changes in cognitive function. Cognitive function refers to the intellectual ability used in learning, thinking, reasoning, problem solving, decision-making, recalling, and attention.
In addition, it was also pointed out that changes in sleep with age are related to the initial symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, depression and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, this time we investigated the relationship between self-declared sleep time, population dynamics, lifestyle factors, cognitive function, and protein level of the subject's " β-amyloid ".
According to , PhD researcher at Stanford University , Joe Warner, who is the lead author of the paper, the survey results show that the β- of subjects who self-declared sleep time is short (defined as less than 6 hours) With higher levels of amyloid, the risk of dementia "increases significantly".
The comparison objects are subjects who have declared normal sleep time (defined as 7-8 hours).
Elderly people with insufficient sleep have also had some or significantly bad results in tests used to evaluate cognitive ability and determine mild dementia. The cognitive abilities as the evaluation object include recognition ability, attention, memory, language ability, visual space ability and so on.
On the other hand, excessive sleep is also related to the decline of executive function, but the level of β-amyloid protein does not rise among these people. The subjects who reported long sleep time (9 hours or more) had slightly lower scores in the "digital symbol replacement test", which measures the ability to correctly match numbers and symbols, compared to people who normally sleep.
Warner explained in the email that the main point of the research results is "it is important to maintain a healthy sleep even at an advanced age." He also said: "People who sleep too little and too much,Both showed an increase in body mass index (BMI) and an increase in depressive symptoms. "From the results of this study, it can be seen that short sleep and long sleep may be related to different diseases.
According to Mr. Warner, β-amyloid "is a protein produced by normal brain activity. But it’s not clear about its function."
β-amyloid is one of the first signs discovered in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease begins to accumulate β-amyloid in the entire brain area, which interacts with each other. They stick together to form "plaques." It is said that amyloid plaques tend to appear with age, but even in the state where amyloid is accumulated in the brain, most people are still healthy.
According to According to the Alzheimer's Association, once contracted with the disease, brain cells that acquire, process, and store information will degenerate and die. One of the powerful theories about the cause of death is the "amyloid hypothesis", due to β-starch Accumulation of amyloid-like protein, communication between brain cells is hindered, suggesting that cells may eventually die.
Research so far has shown that “sleep may limit the production of amyloid in the brain and support the removal of amyloid. The excretion system.” It was Laura Phillips, a senior in the Propaganda Department of the Alzheimer Research University in the United Kingdom, who pointed out this. The group was not involved in this study.
Phillips pointed out that β-amyloid has never appeared in Alzheimer’s. The obvious symptoms began to accumulate many years ago. “Therefore, when studying the risk of sleep problems and Alzheimer’s disease, it is difficult to separate the cause from the effect. Not to mention if you only investigate temporary data.
This study was conducted with 4,417 people with an average age of 71.3. Most of the subjects were white, and their countries of residence were the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
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