Lifestyle
How Quality Sleep Can Boost Your Brain Health: Insights from a New Study
Recent research suggests that both insufficient and excessive sleep are linked to brain changes that may elevate the risk of stroke and dementia later in life. This study, conducted by researchers at Yale School of Medicine, is one of the largest neuroimaging investigations of its kind. It involved examining the brain images of nearly 40,000 middle-aged adults without symptoms to assess the impact of sleep habits on brain health.
The study revealed a significant correlation between suboptimal sleep duration and silent brain injuries that are known precursors to stroke and dementia. According to the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 guidelines, suboptimal sleep is defined as sleeping less than seven hours or nine or more hours per night. These findings were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on December 29.
Santiago Clocchiatti-Tuozzo, MD, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Medicine and the study’s first author, emphasizes the importance of prevention.
“Conditions like stroke or dementia are the end-stage result of a long process that ends tragically,” he explains. “We want to learn how to prevent these processes before they happen.”
A growing body of research indicates that poor sleep can increase the risk of chronic health issues such as heart disease, obesity, and depression. To better understand the effects of sleep duration on the brain, researchers evaluated neuroimaging markers, including white matter hyperintensities and fractional anisotropy. White matter hyperintensities are brain lesions indicating aging and small vessel disease, while fractional anisotropy measures the uniformity of water diffusion across nerve cell axons, reflecting the structural health of the brain’s white matter.
The UK Biobank, a comprehensive biomedical database with over half a million participants aged 40 to 69, provided data for this study. Participants had previously reported their average sleep duration, including naps, and were later selected for a brain MRI neuroimaging study approximately nine years after the initial interviews.
The analysis focused on the effects of insufficient sleep (less than seven hours), optimal sleep (seven to less than nine hours), and excessive sleep (nine or more hours) on the presence and volume of white matter hyperintensities and fractional anisotropy. The findings indicated a significant correlation between suboptimal sleep and poor brain health, even after accounting for other risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, and smoking.
“These findings add to the mounting evidence that sleep is a prime pillar of brain health,” Clocchiatti-Tuozzo states. “It also provides evidence toward helping us understand how sleep and sleep duration can be a modifiable risk factor for brain health later in life.”
The study underscores the importance of middle age as a crucial period for adjusting sleep habits to protect brain health. Clocchiatti-Tuozzo hopes that this research will inspire future clinical trials to explore whether modifying sleep can improve brain health in older age. His team is also interested in investigating the role of genetics in influencing sleep patterns.
“Sleep is starting to become a trending topic,” he notes. “We hope this study and others can offer insight into how we can modify sleep in patients to improve brain health in years to come.”
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