United States: As experts note, the apparent signs of poor night’s sleep are tiredness, grumpiness, irritability, and trouble focusing, but there are some hidden consequences as well.
Lack of sleep in middle-aged adults leads to faster aging in the brain, as shown in a new study conducted at the University of California, San Francisco.
How was the study conducted?
Prior research has been conducted with older adults, but Fox News reported that the average age of the 589 participants in this study was 40 years.
The participants filled out two sleep questionnaires at five-year intervals. Later in the 15-year follow-up, they received brain imaging.
According to Clémence Cavaillès, PhD, the study author and a researcher at UCSF, “We calculated brain age using a machine learning approach, using MRI data to estimate the amount of brain shrinkage corresponding to a specific age.”
“We showed that poor sleep that persisted over five years — and specifically when it related to insomnia symptoms — was found to be highly relevant to brain aging,” Cavaillès reported, as Fox News reported.
Findings of the study
When evaluating the quality of sleep, the scientists followed up some characteristics of poor sleep: poor sleep quality, difficulty initiating sleep, sleep maintenance insomnia, awakenings during the final fifth of the night, and daytime sleepiness.
In the middle-aged participants, brain aging was 1.6 years older in those who had two to three of the above-mentioned poor sleep characteristics, as stated by Cavaillès.
Individuals with four or more negative sleep characteristics depicted a brain age 2.6 years older.
The participants’ results were presented and reported in Neurology, the official medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“These findings are critical because they demonstrate that the link between sleep disturbances and brain health extends beyond older adulthood, suggesting that poor sleep in early midlife may already contribute to accelerated brain aging,” he indicated.
The researcher also proved that, as the brain ages, it has symptoms of the onset of dementia and diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“Therefore, poor sleep may be an important target for early interventions aimed at preventing neurocognitive decline, even before the lesion’s accumulation begins,” he added.