If you needed another reminder of just how important quality sleep is to our health and well-being, a new study has linked three specific sleep problems with a change in risk of developing dementia.
Use of sleep medication and ability to fall asleep quickly are associated with an increased risk of developing dementia over a 10 year period, the researchers found, while having trouble falling back to sleep after waiting comes with a reduced dementia risk.
The findings are notable, as this is the first study to examine the relationship between dementia risk and long-term sleep disturbance in a nationally representative sample of older adults in the US.
"We expected sleep-initiation insomnia and sleep medication usage to increase dementia risk, but we were surprised to find sleep-maintenance insomnia decreased dementia risk." The researchers looked at a decade of data from a longitudinal panel study called the National Health and Aging Trends Study , specifically at 6,284 adults over the age of 65 who lived in the community, and hadn't been diagnosed with dementia at the start of the study period.
The most dramatic link was with sleep-initiation insomnia: those who reported it had a 51 percent higher risk of dementia. The researchers note this increase was reducedno longer statistically significant.On the other hand, there was a 40 percentIt's that last figure that surprised researchers the most.
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