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Missing Out On Deep Sleep Causes Alzheimer's Plaques to Build Up (discovermagazine.com)
"Deep, non-REM sleep helps people's brains to wash away toxic proteins and waste, a new study found, reinforcing the link between sleep deprivation, aging and Alzheimer's disease," reports U.S. News & World Report.
Or, as Discover magazine puts it, "Getting enough deep sleep might be the key to preventing dementia." The discovery reinforces how critical quality sleep is for brain health and suggests sleep therapies might curb the advance of memory-robbing ailments, like Alzheimer's disease... Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) churns through a system of brain tunnels piped in the spaces between brain cells and blood vessels. Scientists call it the glymphatic system. This system circulates nutrients like glucose, the brain's primary energy source, and washes away potentially toxic waste. And it may be the reason why animals even need sleep. The system takes out the brain's trash when we're asleep, and it shuts down when we're awake.
Maiken Nedergaard, a neurologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, who led the new research, and her team were curious if the system works best and clears more waste -- like Alzheimer's causing beta amyloid plaque -- when animals are in deep sleep. To find out, the researchers used six different anesthetics to put mice into deep sleep. Then they tracked cerebrospinal fluid as it flowed into the brain. As the mice slept, the researchers watched the rodents' brain activity on an electroencephalograph, or EEG, and recorded the animals' blood pressures and heart and respiratory rates. Mice anesthetized with a combination of two drugs, ketamine and xylazine, showed the strongest deep sleep brain waves and these brain waves predicted CSF flow into the brain, the researchers found.
The lead researcher now argues that focusing on sleep in the early stages of dementia "might be able to slow progression of the disease."
Or, as Discover magazine puts it, "Getting enough deep sleep might be the key to preventing dementia." The discovery reinforces how critical quality sleep is for brain health and suggests sleep therapies might curb the advance of memory-robbing ailments, like Alzheimer's disease... Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) churns through a system of brain tunnels piped in the spaces between brain cells and blood vessels. Scientists call it the glymphatic system. This system circulates nutrients like glucose, the brain's primary energy source, and washes away potentially toxic waste. And it may be the reason why animals even need sleep. The system takes out the brain's trash when we're asleep, and it shuts down when we're awake.
Maiken Nedergaard, a neurologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, who led the new research, and her team were curious if the system works best and clears more waste -- like Alzheimer's causing beta amyloid plaque -- when animals are in deep sleep. To find out, the researchers used six different anesthetics to put mice into deep sleep. Then they tracked cerebrospinal fluid as it flowed into the brain. As the mice slept, the researchers watched the rodents' brain activity on an electroencephalograph, or EEG, and recorded the animals' blood pressures and heart and respiratory rates. Mice anesthetized with a combination of two drugs, ketamine and xylazine, showed the strongest deep sleep brain waves and these brain waves predicted CSF flow into the brain, the researchers found.
The lead researcher now argues that focusing on sleep in the early stages of dementia "might be able to slow progression of the disease."
https://www.sciencealert.com/marijuana-compound-thc-removes-toxic-alzheimer-protein-from-brain
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/cannabinoids-remove-plaque-forming-alzheimers-proteins-from-brain-cells/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S104474311300064X
I can stop eating healthily and exercising and simply SLEEP a lot more.
I love sleep. It's like death without the commitment.
...CPAP has restored my sleep to where it was 10 years ago, and i feel so much younger. I was sure I was headed for the foggy clouded numbness of old age, but my youth is back, my mind is back and I owe it all to CPAP.
[Paid shill for the CPAP industry] .....NOT!!!
Nowhere is the increase in glymphatic output correlated with a reduction in amyloid plaques nor an hypothesized reduction in Alzheimer's
The study simply shows that if you choose the correct anesthesia you'll get higher glymphatic output
For those who want to know more in this domain, there's a very interesting book by Matthew Walker, called Why we sleep. It provides a very detailed description of what deep sleep and REM sleep do to your body.
So if I spend 12 hours a day in a Ketamine-induced stupor, I can lower my risk of Alzheimer's disease? Of course, when you do that, you greatly increase your risk of a bathtub-induced drowning.
I'm screwed.
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It's not a waste of time, otherwise evolution would have removed it. There's a number of species that sort of remove sleep effectively: aquatic mammals/some birds sleep with half their brain and with one eye closed for mostly avoiding being eaten while asleep and for the aquatic mammals to be able to breathe; however they are still sleeping, so it is required in ways we don't fully understand yet, and TFA might be a clue.
infections in the brain such as P. gingivalis or Herpes(HSV1) travel along the nerve cells into the brain and cause inflammation (Protein plaques) to build up. Cannabis is also known to reduce inflammation.
I had considerable trouble getting to sleep, often taking over two hours after the lights went out. and, if I did manage to get to sleep, I'd wake up within two hours, and take another hour or two to get back to sleep. I'm retired, so even if I didn't really get to sleep until 5 AM, I could just sleep until I woke up. I had a sleep study done, and it consisted of my keeping a sleep diary of when I went to bed, when (roughly) I got to sleep or woke up and if I got up during the night. This told the doctor that I needed to shift my sleep cycle to earlier in the night and now my sleep is more regular and closer to normal. It still takes more time than I'd like to get to sleep, but at least I can get back to sleep without much trouble, and am ready to get up at a more reasonable time.
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I'm 42 years old and have noticed a real short to mid-term memory problem for the past 2 years or so. I literally have a tough time remembering things from 3 weeks ago and struggle to recall specific events more than 6 months ago. I've taken to making copious amounts of notes at work that I can refer to later because I know I won't remember. No-one in my family has it so I'm assuming that means the likelihood of me getting it is reduced (but not zero).
Friends and family put it down to absent mindedness or just overall busyness and say other things occupy my mind and it'll get better but secretly, I don't believe that's the case. Right now, I'm trying to remember what I did at work last Monday and other than recalling things that happened during recurrent meetings, I can't remember. E.g. I know I had a one-time meeting between 10:30am and 11:30am and for the life of me, I can't remember the discussion but can remember the people. Times and dates are especially hard, my wife has come to provide frequent reminders of dates and activities because I just cannot remember them anymore. E.g. if we have a appointment this Saturday, by tomorrow I will have completely forgotten.
For the past 4 years, I've been sleeping maybe 3-4 hours a night. I track this formally via my FitBit but informally, I make a note when I get into bed and then whatever time I get up. Of course, I know I'm worrying about it which is likely contributing to my stress and therefore lack of sleep but nonetheless, I'm def. not sleeping as much. No TV, no phone, just lying in the dark trying to think of nothing. Which is hard... I often imagine myself flying through the nothingness of space just to stop me from thinking about a thousand other things and the darkness of space helps kinda blank everything.
I will say - when I wake up, I'm full of energy. No problems swinging out of bed and getting on with the day so the 3-4 hours sleep isn't affecting my energy level.
I have spoken to my doctor and she was willing to prescribe sleeping pills but I got the impression she didn't really want to investigate the root cause. She's a crap doctor that way but with OHIP being the way it is, I haven't been able to find another doctor in a year. I declined her offer of sleeping pills - I tried prescribed Ambien once and it left me in a bad way - when I woke up in the morning, I was dizzy, dis-orientated, and it was a real effort to even sit up. I was tired until around noon so I gave that up after a few days.
What's the point of this long rant? I'm kinda terrified of getting Alzheimers so I have not researched it a lot. In everything else in my life, I am constantly researching things but the fear of Alzheimers has a strong mental block on me. I would love to hear from others who have experience with it, the folks here (for the most part!) are rational and intelligence so I value your feedback moreso than random forums