Healthy Sleep Is Good For The Brain But Recent Study Of Older Adults Has Found That Lengthy Naps In The Middle Of The Day Might Be A Red Flag For Alzheimers Disease And Other Forms Of Dementia
In a recent study, a research team at Brigham and Womens Hospital has found a link between excessive daytime napping and cognitive aging: excessive daytime napping predicted an increased future risk of Alzheimers, and a diagnosis of Alzheimers sped up the increase in daytime napping during aging. The findings were published in Alzheimers & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimers Association.
Is It Typical For People With Dementia To Sleep A Lot During The Dayblog
People with dementia, especially those in the later stages, can often spend a lot of time sleeping. This can sometimes be worrying for carers, friends and family. Find out why a person with dementia might sleep more than an average person of their age.
It is quite common for a person with dementia, especially in the later stages, to spend a lot of their time sleeping both during the day and night. This can sometimes be distressing for the persons family and friends, as they may worry that something is wrong.
Sleeping more and more is a common feature of later-stage dementia. As the disease progresses, the damage to a persons brain becomes more extensive and they gradually become weaker and frailer over time.
As a result, a person with dementia may find it quite exhausting to do relatively simple tasks like communicating, eating or trying to understand what is going on around them. This can make the person sleep more during the day as their symptoms become more severe.
Some medications may contribute to sleepiness. These include some antipsychotics, antidepressants, antihistamines and of course sleeping pills.
Sleeping disorders unrelated to dementia, such as having breathing that occasionally stops during sleep , can also contribute to sleeping for longer.
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Ultimately, we found that older adults who napped at least once or for more than an hour a day had a 40% higher chance of developing Alzheimers than those who did not nap daily or napped less than an hour a day. These findings were unchanged even after we controlled for factors like daily activities, illness and medications.
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What Should I Do If A Person With Dementia Is Sleeping A Lot
If the person is in the later stages of dementia and they have gradually started sleeping more and more, it is likely to be due to the dementia progressing.
However, if the excessive sleeping has started more suddenly, or the person doesnt seem well in other ways, it may have another cause.
If this is the case you should speak to the GP, to rule out any infections or conditions that could be affecting the person’s sleep. It may also be worth asking for a medication review with the GP or speaking to a pharmacist as medication can cause a range of side effects.
Providing the person doesnt appear to be uncomfortable or distressed, then sleeping more during the day isnt normally a reason to be worried.
However, if a person is lying down in bed and asleep for most of the time they will need to be looked after to make sure they dont develop any physical health problems. This sort of care is normally done by a health or social care professional in a care home or hospice. If the person is still living at home though, then its important to get advice from your GP or nurse on how best to do this.
The Link Between Daytime Napping And Dementia
Sleep disturbance and daytime napping are known symptoms of mild to moderate Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia in older adults. They often become more extreme as the disease progresses: Patients are increasingly less likely to fall asleep and more likely to wake up during the night and feel sleepy during the day.
To examine this link between daytime napping and dementia, my colleagues and I studied a group of 1,401 older adults with an average age of 81 participating in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a longitudinal study examining cognitive decline and Alzheimers disease. The participants wore a watchlike device that tracked their mobility for 14 years. Prolonged periods of inactivity were interpreted as naps.
At the start of the study, approximately 75% of participants did not have any cognitive impairment. Of the remaining participants, 4% had Alzheimers and 20% had mild cognitive impairment, a frequent precursor to dementia.
While daily napping increased among all participants over the years, there were differences in napping habits between those who developed Alzheimers by the end of the study and those who did not. Participants who did not develop cognitive impairment had nap durations that averaged 11 extra minutes per year. This rate doubled after a mild cognitive impairment diagnosis, with naps increasing to 25 extra minutes per year, and tripled after an Alzheimers diagnosis, with nap durations increasing to 68 extra minutes per year.
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Excessive Daytime Napping Could Be Early Sign Of Alzheimers Disease
Napping for longer than one hour or several times a day could be an early sign of Alzheimers disease according to new research. Its suggested excessive daytime napping shares a bidirectional relationship with cognitive decline, both reflecting and shaping changes in the brain.
The relationship between Alzheimers disease and disrupted sleep patterns is well established. Researchers have found disrupted or fragmented sleep can accelerate the pathological signs of Alzheimers, but are daytime naps really a threat to long-term brain health?
“Daytime sleep behaviors of older adults are oftentimes ignored, and a consensus for daytime napping in clinical practice and health care is still lacking,” explained Peng Li, co-first author on the new study.
The new study looked at novel data from an ongoing long-term project tracking memory and aging in more than one thousand senior citizens. For 14 days every year the participants wore motion-tracking devices and naps were calculated by prolonged periods of inactivity during the day.
Each participant was enrolled at an average age of 81 and followed for 14 years. Annual tests were used to measure cognitive decline.
So what comes first excessive napping or cognitive decline?
Naps Became Longer And More Frequent In Peoplewith Alzheimers As Disease Progressed Especiallyafter The Diseases Symptoms Had Appeared
The study had some limitations, including that because participants were all older, findings may not necessarily translate to younger people.
The findings dont indicate that naps are necessarily detrimental to brain health, and again, copious past research has found that healthy sleep is good for the brain. However, in future studies, the team wants to explore whether the correlation would hold true if napping during the day was decreased. In other words, they want to look at whether napping less during the day could have a positive affect on brain health, or even lower the risk of cognitive decline.
Co-senior author Kun Hu, of the Medical Biodynamics Program in the Brighams Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, said that regardless, the team hopes these findings will bring new attention and energy to Alzheimers research around sleep patterns.
Our hope is to draw more attention to daytime sleep patterns and the importance of patients noting if their sleep schedule is changing over time, Hu said. Sleep changes are critical in shaping the internal changes in the brain related to the circadian clocks, cognitive decline, and the risk of dementia.
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Whats The Connection Between Daytime Napping And Alzheimers
Science Communications
BrightFocus-funded researcher Peng Li, PhD wanted to know if sleep disruption and a malfunctioning biological clock are related to Alzheimers. Now he and colleagues have discovered that excessive daytime napping may be a sign.
In a new study recently published in the journal Alzheimers & Dementia , Li and colleagues report on the results of their long-term study of more than 1,400 older adults, which points to a link between excessive daytime napping and the risk of developing Alzheimers disease . The authors also found that participants with an AD diagnosis were more likely to nap during the day.
Memory Loss Is A Well
Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating condition that many associate with memory loss and confusion. “One of the most common signs of Alzheimer’s disease, especially in the early stage, is forgetting recently learned information,” says the Alzheimer’s Association. “Others include forgetting important dates or events, asking the same questions over and over, and increasingly needing to rely on memory aids or family members for things they used to handle on their own.”
But approximately 40 percent of people experience some amount of memory loss after the age of 65 as part of the process of aging, reports the Alzheimer’s Society. This type of normal, age-related memory loss should not disrupt your daily life, or limit your ability to complete routine tasks.
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Is This An Early Sign Of Dementia
- Yue Leng, University of California, San Francisco
Napping is a normal part of aging, but not for extended periods.Tom Ang/Photodisc via Getty Images
Older adults who nap at least once for more than an hour a day have a 40% higher chance of developing dementia.
Doctors often recommend power naps as a way to compensate for a poor nights sleep and help keep alert until bedtime. But for older adults, extensive power naps could be an early sign of dementia.
Research on how napping affects cognition in adults has had mixed results. Somestudies on younger adults suggest that napping is beneficial to cognition, whileothers on older adults suggest it may be linked to cognitive impairment. However, many studies are based on just a single self-reported nap assessment. This methodology may not be accurate for people with cognitive impairment who may not be able to reliably report when or how long they napped.
As an epidemiologist who studies sleep and neurodegeneration in older adults, I wanted to find out if changes in napping habits foreshadow other signs of cognitive decline. A study my colleagues and I recently published found that while napping does increase with age, excessive napping may foreshadow cognitive decline.
Sleep may play a significant role in Alzheimers development.
Vicious Cycle Seen Between Daytime Napping Alzheimer Dementia
FRIDAY, March 25, 2022 Excessive daytime napping predicts an increased future risk of Alzheimer dementia, and a diagnosis of Alzheimer dementia increases daytime napping during aging, according to a study published online March 17 in Alzheimers & Dementia.
Peng Li, Ph.D., from Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, and colleagues used data from 1,401 participants of the Rush Memory and Aging Project to assess the relationship between daytime napping and cognitive aging over 14 years of follow-up.
The researchers found that older adults tended to nap longer and more frequently with aging, while the progression of Alzheimer dementia accelerated this change by more than doubling the annual increases in nap duration/frequency. There was an association noted between longer and more frequent daytime naps with higher risk of Alzheimer dementia. Longer or more frequent daytime napping was correlated with worse cognition a year later, while conversely, worse cognition was correlated with more excessive naps a year later.
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Daytime Napping May Increase Risk Of Strokes And Alzheimer’s: Research
Some scientists believe that taking daytime naps may increase not only the risk of a strokeand potentially an early sign of dangerous high blood pressurebut could also be linked to Alzheimer’s.
In a paper appearing in the journal Hypertension, the research also showed that nodding off for a snooze in a chair may be a serious matter.
Referring to the research on 360,000 people who were tracked for an average of about 11 years, co-author E. Wang of Xiangya Hospital Central South University of China said: “These results are especially interesting since millions of people might enjoy a regular or even daily nap.”
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, reduces the delivery of oxygen to the brain, blocks blood vessels, and increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, kidney damage, dementia and memory loss, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The researchers examined information in the ongoing Biobank study in the U.K., looking at the lifestyle, genetic, and health information of people aged 40 to 69.
In the U.K., about 14.4 million people are affected, while about a third are undiagnosed.
Those Britons who said they are accustomed to a nap were found to be between 12 to 24 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure.
Wang and colleagues combined Mendelian randomizationwhich uses genetic mutations linked to specific risk factorswith observational information on the participants.
Daytime Napping May Be An Early Symptom Of Alzheimer’s
As with other symptoms of Alzheimer’s, extreme daytime napping in dementia patients is due to damaged brain cells. “Areas of the brain that keep you awake during the day are damaged in the early stages of the memory-robbing disease, which is why people with Alzheimer’s may nap excessively long before they start to struggle with forgetting things,” WebMD explains.
Just as being aware of the early warning signs of cognitive decline is crucial, preventative methods may also be effectiveand it’s never too late to put these healthy lifestyle choices on your to-do list.
These activities include participating in brain-stimulating activities learning new skills eating a healthy diet and getting physical exercise and making sure to maintain social interaction with others, Gregory Day, MD, explained to the Mayo Clinic. If you’re concerned about any signs of cognitive decline, “reach out to your primary care provider or a neurologist for additional guidance,” he advises.
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‘vicious Cycle’ Between Excessive Daytime Napping And Alzheimer’s
Liam Davenport
A bidirectional relationship between daytime napping patterns and cognitive decline in older adults not only predicts the onset of Alzheimer’s disease but also indicates disease progression in those already diagnosed with the disease, new research shows.
A large longitudinal study of more than 1000 individuals, the majority of whom were free of mild cognitive impairment and AD at baseline, used actigraphy to measure daytime napping duration and frequency.
This revealed what the researchers described as a “vicious cycle,” in which AD was associated with substantial increases in the duration and frequency of napping, while longer and more frequent naps were linked to an increased risk of the disease and worsening cognitive performance.
The findings were March 17 in Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
Longer More Frequent Daytime Naps May Predict Alzheimer Dementia
Taking longer and more frequent naps during the day may predict an increased risk of incident Alzheimer dementia among community-based older adults, according to new study findings presented at the SLEEP 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting.
The authors of the study arrived at their conclusion after evaluating 1180 older adults without dementia at baseline, of whom 264 had mild cognitive impairment. Participants in the present study were part of the Rush Memory and Aging Project and had 14 years of available follow-up data.
The authors objectively examined napping characteristics by recording up to 10 days of motor activities at baseline. Daytime napping episodes were defined as segments of motor activity that occurred between 10:00 am and 7:00 pm with continued zero-activity for at least 10 minutes, but less than 1 hour, which the authors noted was to avoid off-wrist periods. Segments that were separated by less than 5 minutes were combined.
Criteria set forth by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Strone and the Alzheimers Disease and Related Disorders Association were used to identify Alzheimer dementia diagnoses. The associations between duration and frequency of daily naps and incident Alzheimer dementia were assessed via Cox proportional hazards models.
Future studies are needed to examine specific underlying mechanisms, the authors concluded.
Christina Vogt
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This Research Followed Older Individuals Over A 14
The research, which was led by UC San Francisco and Harvard Medical School along with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, “its teaching affiliate,” found that dementia may impact parts of your brain by way of your wake-stimulating neurons. The project followed 1,401 older individuals ranging from 74 to 88 years of age, who had been studied for a 14-year period by Rush Memory and Aging Project at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago.
The individuals observed wore a device that recorded their activeness. Each non-active time tracked between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. was considered a nap. The participants wore the watch-like contraption for as long as two weeks.
Annually, each individual was given a series of neuropsychological exams to test their cognition. At the beginning of the research, 75.7% of those studied had no cognitive deterioration, 19.5% of them had mild cognitive deterioration, and 4.1% had a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Vicious Cycle Discovered Between Too Much Daytime Napping And Alzheimers Disease
BOSTON, Mass. Is a midday nap actually doing more harm than good for your brain? A new study has found a vicious cycle between older adults who nap during the day and their risk for Alzheimers disease.
Investigators at Brigham and Womens Hospital say theres a two-way relationship between napping and brain aging. Specifically, excessive daytime napping predicted an increase in the risk of Alzheimers onset later in life. At the same time, having Alzheimers led to an increase in daytime napping as patients got older.
Daytime sleep behaviors of older adults are oftentimes ignored, and a consensus for daytime napping in clinical practice and health care is still lacking, says Peng Li of the Medical Biodynamics Program in the Brighams Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, in a university release.
Our results not only suggest that excessive daytime napping may signal an elevated risk of Alzheimers dementia, but they also show that faster yearly increase in daytime napping may be a sign of deteriorating or unfavored clinical progression of the disease. Our study calls for a closer attention to 24-hour sleep patterns not only nighttime sleep but also daytime sleep for health monitoring in older adults.
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