There has
already been research confirming that people who have sleeping troubles are
prone to have health problems including obesity, diabetes, heart disease,
and/or depression, now there is a new condition added to the list: Alzheimer’s
disease. Researcher Dr. Yo-El Ju or Washington University in St. Louis found
that when the spinal fluid and brain was scanned using PET and MRI imaging, those
who awoke more than five times per hour at night were more likely to have
amyloid plaques in the brain—which is the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s
disease. Participants in Dr. Ju’s study with worse “sleep efficiency” were
reported to have had spent less than eight-five percent of the time in bed
asleep; this was apparently known to be a preclinical Alzheimer’s.
Personally,
I don’t think that lack of sleep is the main cause of a person having Alzheimer’s
disease. It is known that risk factors also include family history and/or genes
connected to the disease; I believe that lack of sleep is only a trigger to put
the disease into action. If Dr. Ju truly
believes that the brain’s sleep-wake cycle interacts with the process of
developing Alzheimer’s, maybe he should suggest a better way to ensure that
people get an adequate amount of sleep to prove his theory. To do this, he
could set up a study with people who get enough sleep and those who are lacking
and then do another scan on the brains and see if there is actually some
changes in the brain. Then again, this is all a tough task because to develop
Alzheimer’s one must have the gene. It always goes back to genetics. The study
is ongoing; there is still no clear connection to sleep and this disease.
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