Sara Mednick PhD - Deep Sleep Amount In Your 40’s & 50’s Predicts Dementia Decades Later - Cutting Edge Health Audio Podcast

Cutting Edge Health: Preventing Cognitive Decline

A good way to keep one’s cognitive faculties strong is to go to bed at a decent hour, according to Dr. Sara Mednick, director of the Sleep and Cognition Lab at the University of California, Irvine.

Her research shows the amount of deep sleep we get in mid-life is critical for preventing dementia as we age. It’s so important that Dr. Mednick recommends getting to bed at 9pm since deep sleep happens at the beginning of the night and you want to get as much of it as possible.

A phase of sleep she calls “downstate” is important to the rhythm of life because it allows people to restore energy for their waking hours.

If toxic proteins accumulated in the brain during daytime are not flushed out at night, they can build into “plaques and tangles” that become part of dementia.

Healthy long-term sleep patterns, Dr. Mednick says, can prevent “memory pathologies.”

Professor Sara Mednick, PhD is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine and author of The Power of the Downstate. She is passionate about understanding how the brain works through her research into sleep and the autonomic nervous system. Dr. Mednick’s seven-bedroom sleep lab works literally around-the-clock to discover methods for boosting cognition by napping, stimulating the brain with electricity, sound and light, and pharmacology. Her lab also investigates how the menstrual cycle and aging affect the brain. Her science has been continuously federally funded (National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense Office of Naval Research, DARPA).

Dr. Mednick's media links-
Website: http://www.saramednick.com/

Instagram: @sara_mednick_downstate

Twitter: @Sara_Mednick

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