After evaluating brain scans of 27,000 middle-aged and older adults and surveying them about their sleep, researchers found that poor sleep could accelerate brain aging.
"The gap between brain age and chronological age widened by about six months for every one-point decrease in the healthy sleep score," said lead author Abigail Dove, a postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology, attention sciences, and society at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
"People with poor sleep had brains that looked, on average, one year older than their actual age," he said in a paper published in the journal eBioMedicine.
Scans showed that people's brains aged faster as their sleep quality decreased.
Inflammation explained about 10 percent of the link between lack of sleep and accelerated brain aging, the experts said.
Our findings provide evidence that poor sleep may contribute to accelerated brain aging and point to inflammation as one of the underlying mechanisms, Dove said.
He added that “since sleep is modifiable, it may be possible to prevent accelerated brain aging and perhaps even cognitive decline through healthier sleep.”
Lack of sleep can also impair the brain's waste disposal system, which is primarily active while a person is sleeping, experts said.
This could lead to increased levels of toxic substances in the brain, including the beta amyloid and tau proteins that have been associated with Alzheimer's disease.
They noted that another way poor sleep could harm brain health is through its effects on heart health.
From Prensa Latina
