Frequent Napping May Be an Early Sign of Dementia in the Elderly

In order to make up for a sleepless night and stay awake until it’s time to sleep, doctors usually give you a ‘nap’ in the middle of the day, that is, short periods of time during the day to conserve your energy. your napping recommends. However, it seems that these shortcuts do not bode well for older individuals.

Research on how napping affects cognition in adults has had rather mixed results. While some studies of younger adults suggest that naps are beneficial for cognition, studies of older adults suggest that cognitive impairment suggests that it may be associated with According to some results, napping during the day is dementia for the elderly, that is. an early sign of dementia it could be.

Excessive daytime drowsiness may be an early sign of cognitive decline

Older adults with known symptoms of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia Sleeping disorder and daytime nap, usually becomes more extreme as the disease progresses. As a result, patients are less likely to fall asleep, and are more likely to wake up at night and feel sleepy during the day.

Yue Leng, an epidemiologist who studies sleep and neurodegeneration in older adults, and her team are looking to find out if changes in nap habits precipitate other signs of cognitive decline. link between daytime sleepiness and dementia To find out, he studied a group of 1,401 adults with an average age of 81. Studies have shown that naps increase in direct proportion with increasing age, and excessive sleep during the day is associated with cognitive decline. a harbinger may have been detected.

At the beginning of the study, in which the prolonged inactivity of participants who wore a watch-like device that tracked their movements for 14 years was interpreted as a shortcut, about 75 percent of the participants did not have any cognitive impairment. Of the remaining participants, 4 percent had Alzheimer’s and 20 percent had mild cognitive impairment, a frequent precursor to dementia.

The amount of napping per day among all participants over the years of the study while increasingBy the end of the study, it was noted that there were some differences between the nap habits of participants with Alzheimer’s disease and those who did not. Accordingly, participants who did not develop cognitive impairment had an average of 11 extra minutes of nap time per year, while this rate doubles per year after a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment. to 25 extra minutes; After the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, it triples every year. to 68 extra minutes rose.

As a result, older adults who nap for at least one or more than an hour a day are more at risk of developing Alzheimer’s than those who do not take a nap every day or nap for less than an hour a day. 40 percent higher conclusion was reached. Even when factors such as daily activities, diseases and medications were examined, there was no change in the findings obtained.

The number of neurons that support wakefulness is less in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients

On the other hand, a University of California study found that longer naps simply up to a certain point It reveals that this is a normal part of aging and offers a potential mechanism for explaining why people with dementia take more frequent and longer naps.

Comparing the postmortem brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease with the brains of people without cognitive impairment, in three regions of the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. supporting alertness found to have fewer neurons. These neuronal changes turned out to be linked to tau proteins, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, where the protein that helps stabilize healthy neurons forms clumps that inhibit communication between neurons.

This means that although the study does not provide conclusive evidence that increased daytime sleepiness causes cognitive decline, long-term naps are beneficial for accelerated aging. a potential signal indicates that. More research is needed to determine whether tracking daytime sleep can help detect cognitive decline.