THURSDAY, Oct. 24, 2024 (HealthDay News) — If you’re in your 40s and 50s and have trouble falling and staying asleep, it’s not a good sign for brain health as you age, suggest new research.

“Our study, which used brain scans to determine the brain age of participants, suggests that poor sleep is linked to almost three additional years of brain aging starting in middle age,” said the lead author of the study, Clémence Cavaillès, of the University of California at San Francisco. Francisco (UCSF).

The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging and was published Oct. 23 in the journal Neurology.

The UCSF team focused on 589 people with an average age of about 40 at the start of the study. Everyone filled out questionnaires about their sleep habits at age 40, and then again around age 45.

Questions included: “Do you usually have trouble falling asleep?” “Do you usually wake up several times during the night? and “Do you usually wake up way too early?”

The responses to the survey led the researchers to identify 6 characteristics of poor sleep:

• short sleep duration

• poor sleep quality

• difficulty falling asleep,

• difficulty staying asleep

• waking up early in the morning

• daytime sleepiness

Around the age of 55, everyone has had brain scans to assess their aging brain.

After adjusting for potential confounders such as age, gender, high blood pressure and diabetes, Cavaillès’ team found that people with four or more of the characteristics of poor sleep had brains 2.6 years “older”, on average, than that of others. people with none or only one of these characteristics.

For people with two or three of the characteristics of poor sleep, the brain was on average 1.6 years older at age 55 compared to those with none or only one.

Yet the study only showed associations and could not prove that poor sleep directly ages the brain.

However, “our findings highlight the importance of addressing sleep problems earlier in life to preserve brain health, including maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, exercising, avoiding caffeine and alcohol before bed and using relaxation techniques,” said study co-author Dr. Kristine Yaffe, vice chair for psychiatry research at UCSF.

“Future research should focus on finding new ways to improve sleep quality and the long-term impact of sleep on young people’s brain health,” she said in a press release.

More information

There are tips for sleeping better at the Sleep Foundation.

SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology, press release, October 23, 2024