A Strange Cure for Lack of Sleep (M)
Why perception of sleep quality is so important.
Category: Sleep
The Best Nap Time To Boost Brain Health
The best nap time could keep your brain five years younger.
The best nap time could keep your brain five years younger.
Taking a nap of around an hour after lunch is linked to the biggest long-term boost in mental health, research suggests.
Almost 3,000 Chinese people over the age of 65 were included in the study of napping.
Around 60 percent reported taking a nap after lunch.
The researchers found that those taking an hour-long nap did the best on measures of memory and cognition.
The study’s authors explain their results:
“…a moderate-duration nap taken during the post-lunch dip is associated with better overall cognition.
Older adults who did not nap or napped longer than 90 minutes (extended nappers) were significantly more likely than those who napped for 30 to 90 minutes after lunch (moderate nappers) to have lower overall cognition scores…”
In comparison, those who took shorter naps, longer naps or no naps were cognitively older.
It worked out that people who did not nap for around an hour were cognitively five years older:
“In the final analysis, no napping, short napping, and extended napping were associated with worse overall cognition than moderate napping.
The difference in overall cognition associated with these napping groups was similar to or greater than the decline in cognition associated with a 5-year increase in age.”
Best nap time
The study is one of the first to look at the benefits of longer afternoon naps.
The benefits of short naps are already well-known, the study’s authors write:
“…the short-term benefits of brief naps (e.g., 10 minutes) are well documented in previous studies and include greater alertness and accuracy and speed when performing a number of cognitive tasks, including psychomotor performance and short-term memory…”
The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (Li et al., 2016).
Poor Sleep Triples The Risk Of Heart Disease
One of the ways that poor sleep may be linked to heart disease is through arterial stiffness.
One of the ways that poor sleep may be linked to heart disease is through arterial stiffness.
Poor sleep can triple the risk of heart disease, a large study finds.
Whether it was lower satisfaction with sleep, feeling sleepy during the day, lower quality sleep or less sleep overall, the worse people slept the higher their risk of heart disease.
The research included almost 7,000 adults who were asked about their sleep patterns and heart disease history.
Some also wore a device that measured their sleep activity.
Dr Soomi Lee, the study’s first author, said:
“This is one of the first studies showing that, among well-functioning adults in midlife, having more sleep health problems may increase the risk of heart disease.
The higher estimated risk in those who provided both self-report and actigraphy sleep data suggests that measuring sleep health accurately and comprehensively is important to increase the prediction of heart disease.”
Arterial stiffness
One of the ways that poor sleep may be linked to heart disease is through arterial stiffness.
Less than seven, or more than eight, hours of sleep can cause arterial stiffness leading to heart disease or stroke, a previous study has found.
Participants who had more than eight hours a night were at a 39 percent higher risk of plaque build-up inside the arteries and for those who slept less than six hours the odds increased to 54 percent.
Consequently, people who sleep more than eight hours or less than seven hours are at higher risk of heart disease or stroke.
Duration of sleep may be as important as exercise and diet for cardiovascular health.
How much sleep?
How much sleep we need is related to factors such as age.
The guidelines for adults are mostly seven to nine hours sleep a night, however, one in three American adults gets less than six hours sleep.
Studies have shown that people who sleep poorly are at greater risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, mental health problem, and early death.
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Lee et al., 2022).
The Best Sleep Position For Clearing The Brain of Waste (M)
On your side, face-up or face-down? The position which best clears metabolic waste from your brain at night.
On your side, face-up or face-down? The position which best clears metabolic waste from your brain at night.
Sleeping on your side removes waste from the brain most efficiently, a study finds.
As a result, sleeping in a lateral position may help reduce the chance of developing Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
Professor Maiken Nedergaard, one of the study’s authors, said:
“It is interesting that the lateral sleep position is already the most popular in human and most animals — even in the wild — and it appears that we have adapted the lateral sleep position to most efficiently clear our brain of the metabolic waste products that built up while we are awake.
The study therefore adds further support to the concept that sleep subserves a distinct biological function of sleep and that is to ‘clean up’ the mess that accumulates while we are awake.
Many types of dementia are linked to sleep disturbances, including difficulties in falling asleep.
It is increasing acknowledged that these sleep disturbances may accelerate memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.
Our finding brings new insight into this topic by showing it is also important what position you sleep in.”
The study of mice tested the brain’s ‘clean-up’ mechanism in three different sleeping positions:
- On the side,
- face-down,
- and face-up.
Scientists monitored the filtering of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) through the brain as it exchanged with interstitial fluid.
This pathway — called the glymphatic pathway — clears waste from the brain most efficiently at night.
Professor Helene Benveniste, another of the study’s authors, said:
“The analysis showed us consistently that glymphatic transport was most efficient in the lateral position when compared to the supine or prone positions.
Because of this finding, we propose that the body posture and sleep quality should be considered when standardizing future diagnostic imaging procedures to assess CSF-ISF transport in humans and therefore the assessment of the clearance of damaging brain proteins that may contribute to or cause brain diseases.”
The next step will be to test the finding in humans.
The research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience (Lee et al., 2015).
This Sleep Pattern Leads To Faster Learning That Lasts Longer (M)
50% improvement in learning from this sleep technique.
An Insomnia Treatment That Halves Depression Risk (M)
Many people who develop insomnia also go on to experience depression.
A Curious Sleep Disorder That Affects One in Seven (M)
Survey of almost 20,000 people finds 15 percent had experienced this sleep disorder in the last year and half of these at least once a week.
The Simplest Way To Fight Depression And Insomnia (M)
To treat insomnia, people are often told to avoid light at night, but this is not the whole story.
This Popular Cure For Lack Of Sleep Does Not Work (M)
Tired people make more mistakes because they lose track of where they are in a task.
How Your Sleep Pattern Reveals Your Personality (M)
Genetic factors connect sleep patterns and personality, research finds.
