Parasomnias include a whole range of sleep disorders that are surprisingly difficult to treat.
Larks tend to rise earlier while owls stay up late — each type extends the part of the day at which they feel their best.
Larks tend to rise earlier while owls stay up late — each type extends the part of the day at which they feel their best.
Morning types or ‘larks’ have superior verbal IQ, research finds.
Morning types are people who prefer to do demanding things earlier in the day, whereas evening types consider their best time to be later on.
Naturally, larks also tend to rise earlier while owls stay up late — each type extends the part of the day at which they feel their best.
The results come as a rebuff to other studies that have found the reverse, that it is owls that have the IQ advantage.
Dr Stuart Fogel, study co-author, how his study is different:
“Once you account for key factors including bedtime and age, we found the opposite to be true, that morning types tend to have superior verbal ability.
This outcome was surprising to us and signals this is much more complicated that anyone thought before.”
The study included 61 people whose ‘morningness’ or ‘eveningness’ was assessed, along with their cognitive abilities.
The results showed that people who were at their best in the morning scored higher on tests of verbal IQ.
Verbal IQ refers to being able to use language to achieve goals.
Critically, the researchers had to account for the fact that young people as a group tend to be evening types.
The fact that young people tend to be evening types may make it harder for them to get the best out of the school day, said Dr Fogel:
“A lot of school start times are not determined by our chronotypes but by parents and work-schedules, so school-aged kids pay the price of that because they are evening types forced to work on a morning type schedule.
For example, math and science classes are normally scheduled early in the day because whatever morning tendencies they have will serve them well.
But the AM is not when they are at their best due to their evening type tendencies.
Ultimately, they are disadvantaged because the type of schedule imposed on them is basically fighting against their biological clock every day.”
The study also found that people with regular daily habits tended to perform the best.
Dr Fogel said:
“Our brain really craves regularity and for us to be optimal in our own rhythms is to stick to that schedule and not be constantly trying to catch up.”
The study was published in the journal Current Research in Behavioral Sciences (Gibbings et al., 2022).
Long-held beliefs about sleep-wake patterns challenged: around half of all people are neither ‘larks’ or ‘owls’.
Half the people in the study, though, slept about an hour less than the recommended amount.
Half the people in the study, though, slept about an hour less than the recommended amount.
Sleeping between 7 and 8 hours a night is best for the brain, research concludes.
More or less sleep than this is linked to lower cognitive performance.
Half the people in the study, though, slept about an hour less than the recommended amount.
The brains of people who slept four hours or less were nine years older, cognitively.
Over-sleeping was also linked to worse cognitive performance.
Professor Adrian Owen, the study’s first author, said:
“We really wanted to capture the sleeping habits of people around the entire globe.
Obviously, there have been many smaller sleep studies of people in laboratories but we wanted to find out what sleep is like in the real world.
People who logged in gave us a lot of information about themselves.
We had a fairly extensive questionnaire and they told us things like which medications they were on, how old they were, where they were in the world and what kind of education they’d received because these are all factors that might have contributed to some of the results.”
The results come from over 40,000 people around the world who completed a survey and cognitive tests.
Lack of sleep — or too much — was bad for the brains of young and old just the same.
Dr Conor Wild, study co-author, said:
“We found that the optimum amount of sleep to keep your brain performing its best is 7 to 8 hours every night and that corresponds to what the doctors will tell you need to keep your body in tip-top shape, as well.
We also found that people that slept more than that amount were equally impaired as those who slept too little.”
The study was published in the journal Sleep (Wild et al., 2018).
Sleep pattern lowered levels of an antioxidant that helps fight cellular damage, such as that caused by Alzheimer’s.
Sleep pattern lowered levels of an antioxidant that helps fight cellular damage, such as that caused by Alzheimer’s.
Sleep disruptions similar to jet lag could cause memory problems linked to Alzheimer’s disease, research finds.
It’s well-known by scientists that there’s a link between Alzheimer’s and sleep, but not what causes what.
Professor Gregory Brewer, who led the research, said:
“The issue is whether poor sleep accelerates the development of Alzheimer’s disease or vice versa.
It’s a chicken-or-egg dilemma, but our research points to disruption of sleep as the accelerator of memory loss.”
The research gave jet-lag to mice that had been genetically engineered to suffer from Alzheimer’s.
They did this by moving the dark period every three days to a different time — which is what causes jet-lag.
The jet-lagged mice had lower levels of an antioxidant that helps fight cellular damage, such as that caused by Alzheimer’s.
This suggests it could be poor sleep that is contributing to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Professor Brewer said:
“This study suggests that clinicians and caregivers should add good sleep habits to regular exercise and a healthy diet to maximize good memory.”
Many other studies have found a link between dementia and sleep.
People who sleep for too little or too long are at a higher risk of cognitive decline and dementia.
Indeed, people who sleep more than 9 hours a night have double the risk of developing dementia, one study found.
However, those who sleep for between 5.5 and 7.5 hours per night do not see declines in their cognitive health, even when suffering the early effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
Those sleeping longer also have lower brain volumes.
Also, getting less REM sleep — the phase in which we dream — is linked to dementia.
During sleep the brain cycles between periods of deep sleep and then up towards shallower periods of sleep in which we tend to dream, whether we remember those dreams or not.
During REM sleep the eyes move rapidly from side-to-side (hence Rapid Eye Movement Sleep).
Sleep apnea has also been linked to developing Alzheimer’s disease.
The most common signs of sleep apnea, which affects 30 percent of older people, include:
The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Brewer et al., 2015).
There is some stigma around napping, perhaps partly because excessive daytime napping can be a sign of Alzheimer’s.
A sleep habit many people develop that unfortunately causes insomnia.
If poor sleep is contributing to dementia, then sleeping pills may be beneficial.
Almost one-in-ten regularly take this medication that is repeatedly linked to increased dementia risk.
Almost one-in-ten regularly take this medication that is repeatedly linked to increased dementia risk.
Another study has found a link between taking sleeping medication and increased dementia risk.
Taking sleep medication was linked to a 79 percent increased risk of dementia among white people.
The link was not seen in Black people, however, and Dr Yue Leng, the study’s first author, is not sure of the reason:
“Differences may be attributed to socio-economic status.
Black participants who have access to sleep medications might be a select group with high socio-economic status and, thus, greater cognitive reserve, making them less susceptible to dementia.
It’s also possible that some sleep medications were associated with a higher risk of dementia than others.”
The study included around 3,000 older people, average age 74, almost half of whom were Black.
The results showed that white people were three times as likely to take sleep medication as Black people.
White people were twice as likely to use benzodiazepines, like Halcion, Dalmane and Restoril and 7 times as likely to use “Z-drugs,” such as Ambien.
It may be that the types of drugs that white people take puts them at higher risk of dementia.
For sleep problems, other options than medication should be considered, said Dr Leng:
“The first step is to determine what kind of sleep issues patients are dealing with.
A sleep test may be required if sleep apnea is a possibility.
If insomnia is diagnosed, cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) is the first-line treatment.
If medication is to be used, melatonin might be a safer option, but we need more evidence to understand its long-term impact on health.”
The most common signs of sleep apnea, which affects 30 percent of older people, include:
Poor sleep is one of the common symptoms of dementia, so it may be that taking more sleep medications is a result rather than a cause of dementia.
However, other studies have controlled for this factor and still found a link between anti-anxiety and sleep medication and early death.
These find a dose-response effect: the more of the drugs people took, the higher their risk of death.
Many other studies have found a link between dementia and sleep.
People who sleep for too little or too long are at a higher risk of cognitive decline and dementia.
Indeed, people who sleep more than 9 hours a night have double the risk of developing dementia, one study found.
However, those who sleep for between 5.5 and 7.5 hours per night do not see declines in their cognitive health, even when suffering the early effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
Those sleeping longer also have lower brain volumes.
Also, getting less REM sleep — the phase in which we dream — is linked to dementia.
→ Read on: Dementia: 9 Warning Signs Everyone Should Know
The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (Leng et al., 2023).
Around 40% of US adults say they have trouble falling asleep.
Around 40% of US adults say they have trouble falling asleep.
Writing a to-do list for the next day before bedtime helps people fall asleep faster, research finds.
The more specific the list, the faster people fall asleep.
Use this tip in concert with those described here: How To Fall Asleep Fast.
Dr Michael K. Scullin, who led the study, said:
“We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime.
Most people just cycle through their to-do lists in their heads, and so we wanted to explore whether the act of writing them down could counteract nighttime difficulties with falling asleep.”
The 57 people in the study wrote for just five minutes before sleeping.
The study compared writing a to-do list with writing a list of completed activities before bedtime.
Dr Scullin said:
“There are two schools of thought about this.
One is that writing about the future would lead to increased worry about unfinished tasks and delay sleep, while journaling about completed activities should not trigger worry.
The alternative hypothesis is that writing a to-do list will ‘offload’ those thoughts and reduce worry,”
The research was conducted in a sleep lab and people had their electrical brain activity monitored overnight.
Dr Scullin was cautious about the results:
“Measures of personality, anxiety and depression might moderate the effects of writing on falling asleep, and that could be explored in an investigation with a larger sample.
We recruited healthy young adults, and so we don’t know whether our findings would generalize to patients with insomnia, though some writing activities have previously been suggested to benefit such patients.”
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Scullin et al., 2018).
