According to one study, sleep medication use and the inability to fall asleep quickly are associated with an increased risk of developing dementia over a 10-year period. Research published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found a significant link between three measures of sleep disturbances and the risk of developing dementia, a neurodegenerative disease. Researchers associate sleep-initiation insomnia (trouble falling asleep within 30 minutes) and sleep medication use with a higher risk of developing dementia. They also found that people who reported having sleep-maintenance insomnia (trouble falling back to sleep after waking up) were less likely to develop dementia during the study.
“We expected that sleep-initiation insomnia and sleep medication use would increase the risk of dementia, but sleep-maintenance insomnia would reduce the risk of dementia,” said lead investigator Roger Wong, an assistant professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, US. Gaya, we were surprised to know.” The research is the first to examine how measures of long-term sleep disturbance are associated with dementia risk using a nationally representative US older adult sample.
Previous research has linked rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior – which is believed to play an important role in memory and learning – less than five hours of sleep, and use of short-acting benzodiazepines with cognitive decline. Use. The findings for sleep-maintenance insomnia support other recent studies using smaller, different data samples. The study used 10 annual waves (2011–2020) of prospective data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a longitudinal panel study that tracks the national population of Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older within the US. Surveys a representative sample at the level.
The study only included people who were dementia-free at baseline in 2011. There is no cure for dementia and recent pharmaceutical approaches to treat dementia have had limited success, pointing to the importance of preventive approaches to dementia. “By focusing on changes in sleep disturbances, our findings may help inform lifestyle changes that may reduce dementia risk,” said co-investigator Margaret Anne Lavier of SUNY Upstate Medical University.