Too much or too little sleep for the brain

Monday, September 21, 2020 (Health Day News)-Everyone needs sleep, but new research suggests that too little or too much sleep can lead to poor thinking. ..

Too little sleep was defined as less than 4 hours a night, and too much sleep was considered more than 10 hours a night. What is the ideal amount? 7 hours at night.

“Cognitive function should be monitored in individuals with sleep deprivation or excessive sleep,” said Yanjun Ma, a research author at the Peking University Clinic Institute in Beijing.

Still, the horse warned that too little or too much sleep could not be proven to cause mental (“cognitive”) depression, but only appeared to be relevant.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep is essential because it recharges the body and mind. Proper sleep can also help maintain good health and prevent illness.

Without adequate sleep, the brain cannot function properly, impairing concentration, clear thinking, and memory processing.

However, the underlying mechanism of these associations remains unclear. The horse said the inflammation could be associated with excessive sleep.

On the other hand, too little sleep can increase cerebrospinal fluid levels of amyloid plaques and tau protein, which are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease, Ma added.

Dr. Samgandy, Deputy Director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in New York City, said, “During sleep, the lymphatic system of the brain is more active in flushing out excessive levels of toxins than at any other time in the circadian cycle. Includes amyloid beta peptide. ”

He explained that each person probably has the optimal balance between sleep and amyloid clearance, and too much or too little of one can cause others to lean in the wrong direction.

“Technologies for individual optimization have generally not been deployed to the level of toxins in the brain, but this seems to be an important emerging area,” Gandhi said. “Optimizing sleep and amyloid clearance may add to sleep apnea as another easily treatable factor that promotes cognitive decline in later years.”

The study collected data on more than 20,000 men and women in which the horse team participated in either a longitudinal study of English aging or a longitudinal study of health and retirement in China.

Participants reported their sleep habits and took a cognitive test.

During follow-up, researchers found that cognitive scores declined faster in people who slept less than 4 hours and more than 10 hours a night than those who slept 7 hours a night.

This association is called a U-shaped relationship. This is because the effects of sleep on cognition can be seen at both ends of the curve.

The report was published online on September 21st JAMA Network Open..

Dr. Yue Leng, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, co-authored an editorial accompanying this study. “More and more studies have found a U-shaped relationship between sleep time and cognition, and both short and long sleep times were associated with worse cognition,” she said. It was.

However, the implications of this U-shaped relationship are unclear, partly due to research design limitations, Ren said.

Leng pointed out that beyond sleep time, both quality and quantity of sleep need to be considered in order to actually determine how sleep affects cognition. Perhaps she suggested that sleep could be used to prevent and manage dementia.

“It’s been almost 20 years since it was first suggested that sleep is associated with cognitive health in the elderly,” Ren said. “Better study design and more effective and reliable measurements are needed to clarify this relationship.”

The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults sleep 7-9 hours each night.

To get a good night’s sleep, the Foundation recommends having good sleep habits, including:

• Have realistic bedtime and stick to weekly and weekend nights.
• Keep your bedroom cool and dark.
• Ban TVs, computers, tablets, mobile phones and other electronic devices from the bedroom.
• Do not consume caffeine, alcohol, or large meals during bedtime.
• I don’t smoke day or night.
• Exercise during the day. This will help you relax and prepare for sleep.

For more information

For more information on sleep Sleep Foundation..