Recent research on sleep and risk of dementia and cardiovascular disease

[Rhyothemis]

Some notes on recent research findings linking poor sleep (short duration and increased arousal) with increased risk of dementia and cardiovascular disease:

rhyobrain.blogspot.com/2021...

[kaliska0]

The wide range of problems that result from chronic sleep disturbances is quite well known and obvious by now. Sleep does many important things. Not sleeping properly results in all sorts of important things not working correctly. The risk of developing practically every neurological disorder, heart or circulatory problem, organ damage, cancer, hormone problems, psychiatric disorders, chronic pain disorders, immune system problems, diabetes, weight gain, weight loss, digestive problems, metabolic issues...... and any other acquired or in some cases genetically linked health problem you can come up with increases when you suffer chronic sleep loss. We don't really need any more studies to add things to the list. What we need is why it all happens so we can prevent it.

Problem is we barely have any clues why. Many researchers into sleep have quit trying to figure out why people suffer sleep disorders, what the result is, and how to improve it. At this point many are simply trying to figure out what it does that is so important it can interrupt every process in the body so we know what it is we're trying to accomplish when treating problems that arise. Every conscious living thing in the world sleeps. The body takes more extreme action to prevent complete loss of sleep than it does to make up for not breathing but we have no idea why it's necessary or what it actually does. Without knowing that we don't have much chance of effectively treating any sleep disorders beyond the most obvious things like sleep apnea or pituitary tumors.

nhlbi.nih.gov/science/news/...

sciencedaily.com/news/healt...

aasm.org/studies-find-new-l...

health.harvard.edu/newslett...

springer.com/journal/40675

uptodate.com/contents/whats...

Our knowledge of sleep medicine today is probably comparable to the ancient greeks trying to solve thyroid disorders. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl... A bunch of guesses based on what appears to cause the majority to improve or get worse without an understanding of even the basic concepts needed to individualize treatment or directly target most causes.

Some researchers are still concentrating on trying to find more immediate relief for sleep disorders even if we don't fully understand sleep. The wide range of variables and different responses people have to reduced sleep quality are among the biggest problems when studying or diagnosing sleep disturbances. Finding ways to better classify types of insomnia might make it easier to design studies with less variables, more consistent results, and create specific treatment approaches for different groups of people.

medicalnewstoday.com/articl...

As a sort of opposite approach toward the same goal using emerging technology in home sleep monitoring and consumer eeg devices to study sleep ongoing in the real world with all it's variables instead of only a limited period in an isolated sleep lab might further the understanding of causes and effective treatments for sleep disturbances. Especially when it comes to individualizing treatments instead of handing out general guidelines for lifestyle changes and much the same medications to everyone.

hopkinsmedicine.org/health/...

nature.com/articles/s41746-...

[Catsamaze]

You can get 9 perfect hours of sleep every night and be healthy beyond all measure for many decades with little stress and never having suffered from depression and die of a heart attack after developing dementia. I respect anyone for keeping up with research but I can’t do it anymore. Yes, stress is bad. Yes, insomnia is bad. Do these purveyors of doom think we don’t know that? This is not a rant against you, Rhyothemis! It’s my problem....sometimes I just have to express my feelings about this topic.

[Rhyothemis]

kaliska0 I see a lot of potential for sleep trackers and am considering getting an Oura ring or perhaps another wearable.

Catsamaze

I understand where you are coming from, as I have suffered from insomnia

for years - as well as other symptoms suggestive of prodromal stage of a

neurodegenerative disease. The best I can do for sleep duration seems to be 5 hours even though I am very tired during the day. I keep up with the news in hopes I might find ways to slow whatever it is down or improve my quality of life.

In my post (and I keep stuff on the blog to help me keep track of things; it also makes sharing things a bit easier as I don't have to re-type everything on different forums), I mention research on the locus coeruleus (LC) that looks like it might lead to something.

The studies by Skike et al. point to mTOR as a possible target, and a quick search turns up some mouse studies showing benefits to sleep for rapamycin (aka sirolimus). There is currently a clinical trial on for rapamycin for multiple system atrophy, which my father had (it's not supposed to be hereditary, but I had a rather bad toxicant exposure around 30 years ago so... ). The Dog Aging Project is trialing low dose rapamycin on pet dogs in order to extend healthspan and lifespan. They have reported some success in a pilot study - no side effects and some improvement in cardiac function.

Controlled breathing exercises might be another possibility - there appear to be mixed results for controlled breathing on sleep in the literature. 4-7-8 breathing looks interesting & have noticed improved mood from it but I'm wondering if I should hold off on doing it consistently until I get a sleep tracker.

There's also very interesting research related to sex differences in the locus coeruleus; perhaps it explains the sex difference in incidence rates for Parkinson's; perhaps for Alzheimer's - though it is not clear if there really is a sex difference in incidence of AD .

~

The Nature article that kaliska0 linked to says that risk for CVD increases above 8-9 hours of sleep. Something I definitely don't have to worry about