Improving Deep Sleep May Prevent Dementia

 With your risk of dementia post stroke, what is your doctor's protocol to consistently get you to deep sleep?

Your chances of getting dementia.

1. A documented 33% dementia chance post-stroke from an Australian study?   May 2012.

2. Then this study came out and seems to have a range from 17-66%. December 2013.`    

3. A 20% chance in this research.   July 2013.

4. Dementia Risk Doubled in Patients Following Stroke September 2018 

The latest here:

Improving Deep Sleep May Prevent Dementia

Enhancing or maintaining deep sleep, also known as slow wave sleep, in older years could prevent dementia, according to a study published in JAMA Neurology.

“Slow-wave sleep, or deep sleep, supports the aging brain in many ways, and we know that sleep augments the clearance of metabolic waste from the brain, including

facilitating the clearance of proteins that aggregate in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Matthew Pase, PhD, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. “However, to date, we have been unsure of the role of slow-wave sleep in the development of dementia.”

For the study, Jayandra Himali, PhD, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas, and colleagues looked at 346 participants with a mean age of 69 years who were enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study. The patients completed 2 overnight sleep studies within the time periods 1995 to 1998 and 2001 to 2003, with an average of 5 years between the 2 studies.

These participants were then carefully followed for dementia from the time of the second sleep study through 2018.

The researchers found that, on average, the amount of deep sleep declined between the 2 studies, indicating slow wave sleep loss with aging. Over 17 years of follow-up, there were 52 cases of dementia. Even after adjusting for age, sex, cohort, genetic factors, smoking status, sleeping medication use, antidepressant use, and anxiolytic use, each percentage decrease in deep sleep per year was associated with a 27% increase in the risk of dementia.

“We also examined whether genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease or brain volumes suggestive of early neurodegeneration were associated with a reduction in slow-wave sleep,” said Dr. Pase. “We found that a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, but not brain volume, was associated with accelerated declines in slow wave sleep.”

“Our findings suggest that slow wave sleep loss may be a modifiable dementia risk factor,” he concluded.

Reference: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/article-abstract/2810957

SOURCE: Monash University