Sleep is important for many reasons, but experts have warned that too much sleep can actually be bad for your brain. Official guidance from the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) states that most adults need six to nine hours of sleep every night.
However, recent studies have nevertheless shown that some adults need just four hours of sleep to wake up feeling refreshed. On the other hand, pexpert surveys in Washington, USA, found that sleeping too much can actually interfere with your cognitive function.
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Experts found that people who slept less than 4.5 hours a night and those who slept more than 6.5 hours a night had a higher risk of cognitive decline over time. It is important to note that all of these participants also struggled with poor sleep quality.
Scientists also found that the impact of sleep duration on the brain had the same effect as aging – which is one of the biggest risk factors when it comes to developing diseases like Alzheimer’s. American researchers suggest that for adults, getting between 4.5 and 6.5 hours of sleep a night is ideal.
writing in The Conversationsenior psychology professor Greg Elder said researchers aren’t sure why lack of sleep is linked to cognitive decline, “One theory is that sleep helps our brains eliminate harmful proteins that build up during the day. So interfering with sleep can interfere with our brain’s ability to get rid of them.”
He added that the Washington study’s findings are surprising, as most health bodies, including the NHS in the UK and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US, say people should have more than six hours per night.
“The study showed that sleeping more than 6.5 hours was associated with cognitive decline over time – this is low when we consider that older adults are recommended to sleep between seven and eight hours every night.”
One theory is that perhaps it’s not necessarily the duration of sleep that matters, but the quality of that sleep when it comes to the risk of developing dementia.
The professor said it is essential to remember that the 100 study participants who slept the longest may be suffering from problems that were not detected in the tests. The researchers adjusted for dementia-related factors, but Greg explained that people who sleep more may also have other pre-existing conditions that may have contributed to cognitive decline that were not taken into account.
“For example, this could include health problems, socioeconomic status or physical activity levels. All these factors together may explain why longer sleep is linked to cognitive decline.”
A separate study, published in San Francisco, also in the United States, found that the amount we sleep is actually genetic. The study’s lead author, neurologist Louis Ptacek, said: “There is a dogma in the field that everyone needs eight hours of sleep, but our work to date confirms that the amount of sleep people need differs based on how much sleep they need. genetics”.
“Think of it as analogous to height; there is no perfect amount of height, each person is different. We show that the case is similar for sleep”, the neurologist detailed.
Studying sleep patterns for over ten years, andThey studied people with Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS), the ability to function fully — and have a preference for four to six hours of sleep a night. However, they said that studying the genes linked to sleep would be like a ‘a thousand-piece jigsaw’.
Experts explained that sleep problems are common in all diseases of the brain. “This makes sense because sleep is a complex activity. Many parts of your brain need to work together for you to fall asleep and wake up. “When these parts of the brain are damaged, it makes it harder to sleep or get quality sleep.”
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