Studies Suggest Interrupted Sleep May Lead to Alzheimer’s

According to new research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, a solid night’s worth of sleep is crucial in the fight against dementia.

The Chicago Tribune reports that researchers at Wheaton College discovered significant connections between breathing disorders that disturb sleep and the buildup of biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease.

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They went on to find that treating these problems with dental appliances or CPAP machines that enable air into airways could help lower the risk of dementia or slow progression.

The Tribune states that those with “sleep-disordered breathing experience” most often repeated episodes of hypopnea (known as, under breathing) and apnea (known as, not breathing) during sleep. However, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, the most common form found was Obstructive Sleep Apnea, which occurs in around three in 10 men, and one in 5 women.

This occurs when the upper airways close fully or partially while the subject continues to breath. It can wake a person up 50 or 60 times a night, disturbing the stages of sleep necessary for a good night’s sleep. Additionally, they discovered that it often begins during middle age, before any medical signs of Alzheimer’s appear.

Though the correlation between sleep apnea and dementia has been studied in the past, one of the Wheaton researchers, Megan Hogan, suggests these are the first linear studies to look at the relationship between sleep disruption and biomarkers commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

It should be noted that past research has found the brain clears up deposits of amyloid plaque during sleep, but Hogan theorizes that apnea may delay this process.

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“During sleep, when your brain has time to wash away all the toxins that have built up throughout the day, continually interrupting sleep may give it less time to do that,” she said.

Ronald Petersen, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging says it might be in the deepest stages of sleep that the washing away takes place.

“If you’re only making it to Stage 1 or Stage 2 and then you start choking or snoring or whatever and you wake yourself up and you do it again and again, you may not even be aware of it, but you…may be accumulating this bad amyloid in the brain rather than clearing it,” he said.

Frequent deprivation of oxygen to the brain that occurs during apnea might also create amyloid buildup as oxygen begins to normalize enzymes that are responsible for creating amyloid.