Beauty Sleep for Your Brain: The Power of Sleep to Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease

Beauty Sleep for Your Brain: The Power of Sleep to Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease

By Eileen Donahue Robinson, PhD−

What’s the easiest thing you can do to help protect yourself against Alzheimer’s? Absolutely nothing. Just kick back, relax, and catch some z’s.

We all know that our minds are clearer after a good night’s sleep than when we’re sleep deprived and groggy.   And it’s not just because feeling sleepy distracts you from the task at hand. Sleep, especially deep wave sleep, helps your brain to transfer what you learn during the day into long-term memory where you’ll be able to remember it later. If you don’t get enough sleep, or don’t sleep deeply enough at night, it becomes harder and harder to learn and remember new things.

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But your mind doesn’t just feel clearer after a good night’s sleep—brain scans show that your brain tissues are visibly cleaner after you sleep. That’s because while your sleeping brain is busily organizing and recording your memories, it also shrinks a bit in size, which increases the space between neurons by 60%. The brain uses the extra space to pump special cleaning fluids across its tissues, washing away waste products—including beta-amyloid, which is associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. In fact, your brain pumps 10 times as much cleaning fluid through its tissues when you sleep as compared to when you are awake. So if you’re sleeping long enough and deeply enough, your brain gets a power wash every night.

If your sleep is habitually poor, the effects on your memory and brain health create a vicious cycle. When you don’t sleep enough, “plaques” of beta-amyloid build up in your brain. And one of the first places the plaques build up is in your brain’s medial frontal lobe — which is precisely the area of the brain that controls the deep wave sleep that is needed to solidify new memories. The less you sleep, the more cluttered your brain becomes. The more cluttered your brain, the less you sleep. When work, insomnia, or other factors disrupt your sleep night after night in a chronic fashion, “tangles” of damaged tau proteins also begin to accumulate. These tangles, which are also associated with Alzheimer’s Disease, block neural synapses, making it harder for the brain to send the neuro-chemical signals it uses to process information. Over many years, large buildups of amyloid plaques and tangled tau proteins make it harder and harder for your brain to think, feel, monitor your environment, communicate, make decisions, and direct all of the other systems in your body.

So if you don’t sleep long enough every night, or if you don’t sleep deeply enough, consider what lifestyle changes you can make to help you improve your sleep. Start by making sleep one of your top priorities. Staying up late to work doesn’t improve the quality of your work, and it certainly doesn’t help your ability to function the next day. If you’re giving up sleep in order to take care of your loved ones, remember to care for yourself, too; sleeping better will help you stay healthy enough to keep on helping others. If you struggle with insomnia, consider lifestyle remedies like keeping a regular sleep schedule, exercising at least 20 to 30 minutes per day, and limiting your intake of caffeine. If you still have trouble sleeping, talk to your doctor or visit a sleep clinic, where you can find a wide variety of treatments to improve your sleep, such as light therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, and if necessary, prescription medications or natural supplements.

Sleep is only one piece of the Alzheimer’s puzzle, and sleeping well cannot guarantee that you won’t develop Alzheimer’s. But making sleep a priority—both in terms of hours slept and the quality of your sleep—can improve your brain’s ability to fight off Alzheimer’s for as long as possible.

 

Eileen Donahue Robinson, PhD, is Chief Research Psychologist of Lifestyle Rewired. The company offers lifestyle assessments, High Value Activity Programs and Immersion Travel Programs that enrich and protect brain health. Lifestyle Rewired’s programs and tools focus on activities that inspire wellness, learning, new experiences, and meaningful human connection.

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Beauty Sleep for Your Brain: The Power of Sleep to Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease
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