One of the issues that older adults face is getting enough quality rest and sleep. Older mens’ sleep is often interrupted in the middle of the night by the need to urinate if they have prostate issues. Many post-menopausal women suffer from insomnia and night-time breathing disorders. Others just have a hard time “shutting off” all the activities of the day. It turns out that lack of quality sleep can affect more than just our level of energy the next day; it can also influence the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease.

ScienceAlert just reported on a study conducted at UC-Berkeley published in BMC Medicine (an on-line journal of medicine) in May. The research showed that subjects in the study who got more deep sleep (defined as non-rapid eye movement slow wave sleep) did better on memory tests the next day than those who did not. The article notes that there is a bit of a chicken-egg issue here; one of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s is sleep problems…and sleep problems may worsen the disease progression. Even so, this appears to be another piece in the puzzle.

Researchers believe that the study and scores of others like it point to this kind of sleep as necessary for allowing the body to get rid of waste products in the brain that accumulate during the day. It remains to be seen what improved sleep over the long-term might do, but in the short-term it appears that more of this kind of sleep can slow the progression of the disease. If, in fact, there is a cause-effect relationship there will be more effective ways to prevent this kind of dementia.

The article also mentions the role of sleep aids (that might actually do more harm than good in this respect). In order to get a better night’s sleep quality, lay off of caffeine later in the day, exercise, limit screen time at night, and take a hot shower. Most of us would like to get on board with that…and now we know it may have the added benefit of preventing dementia.