Disrupted sleep can lead to memory problems

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Avoiding memory and thinking problems later in life could depend on your sleep quality in middle age.

That’s what researchers with the American Academy of Neurology learned recently after studying the association between disrupted sleep among people in their 30s and 40s and cognitive problems as they aged. To better understand it, the scientists worked with more than 500 people in their 40s, studying their sleep duration and quality for 11 years.

The participants slept an average six hours a night, completed sleep quality surveys and occasionally wore activity monitors. They also completed a series of thinking and memory tests.

The researchers then looked more closely at sleep fragmentation, which measures short interruptions in sleep. Those with the most disrupted sleep were four times more likely to have poor cognitive performance a decade later compared with those who had the fewest sleep disruptions. Those whose sleep quality fell somewhere in the middle showed no differences in future cognitive performance when compared with the group with the least disrupted sleep.

So why study mid-life sleep habits as a window into future memory and thinking issues? The researchers say unraveling the connection between sleep and cognition is key to understanding the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Signs of the disease accumulate in the brain decades before symptoms begin.

The scientists say more research is needed to determine if there are critical life periods when sleep is more strongly associated with cognition.

So, keep an eye on your sleep habits. There may be more at stake than feeling rested in the morning.