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Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

cnn.com

21–30 of 173 posts

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#21
post #14

So, anyone with kids is probably going to have dementia?

Usually parents can't sleep well only for a year at most, even 6 months old children are sleeping whole nights.

Then in their teens they may sleep 10 hours a day but that's the only time you're not worried.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#22
post #14

So, anyone with kids is probably going to have dementia?

Usually parents can't sleep well only for a year at most, even 6 months old children are sleeping whole nights.

You say that. I too believed as you did. I looked for the joyous day when I could sleep through the night with our first and second and third.

But it turns out toddlers will get up in the night and ask you to tuck them back in, they will get up because they had a scary dream, because they can't find their stuffed animal, and don't get me started on night terrors.

The point is I don't think this tracks.

I don't think I've had a solid week of uninterrupted sleep since our first came home.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#23
post #14

So, anyone with kids is probably going to have dementia?

Usually parents can't sleep well only for a year at most, even 6 months old children are sleeping whole nights.

Ha! This is not my lived experience at all nor of my friend-group. My older kid, 5, mostly sleeps fine now, but both he and his sibling had middle-of-night issues well into their 2s. Even now, if one of my kids wakes (sometimes many hours before I would choose to wake, sometimes due to things like bed wetting), I’m not going to be finishing my nights sleep, and even if I did, the quality is simply lower.

Pre-6 months, we’re talking about a zombie lifestyle where there is no “sleeping at night,” just sleeping between feedings.

I acknowledge there are definitely both cultural and hereditary elements to this, but your comment is so starkly different from my experience and the experience of my friends.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#24
post #8

nurses and doctors, the 'health' workers, and other erratic schedule-shifting shift workers... RIP

This is well known, and there is a movement to change this for residents, at least. So far nothing has changed.

More proximally: the level of care you can receive / number of errors committed is seriously affected by the loss of sleep by your carer.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#25
post #7

Unless it's an emergency, I've ALWAYS prioritized sleep. It's just too important for health regardless of these latest findings. I'd call in to work if I didn't get a full nights rest in the past, it's not worth feeling like shit for the rest of the day. The culture of glamorizing working longer and harder till early hours of the mornings on zero sleep, has always been nonsense. Musk is notorious for bragging about t…

I think Elon Musk looks his age, and looks pretty ok for a 49 year old. Granted he has money, and he's had hair transplants, but I've seen many late 40s early 50s people in much worse shape.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#26
post #19
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually parents can't sleep well only for a year at most, even 6 months old children are sleeping whole nights.

That's just half of the picture. My kids are older but they have a talent to get up at 6 in the morning on weekends. And need to get up at similar times for school during the week.

If you have kids getting up at 6 for school and you haven't adjusted your sleep schedule to match, isn't that kind of on you now?

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#27
post #9

"However, this study cannot establish cause and effect" is the only part of this article that matters, and it demonstrates the ineptitude of the article writer.

I agree. This sort of article is partly the reason why we so often here something like "science can't make up its mind" or "x is good now but was bad before, and will be bad again soon". Instead of sharing accurate information about the findings of these researchers, news organizations use them to write catchy, clickbait-y articles. Needless to say, researchers are often to blame as well, since they participate in in…

It's really hard to fight this though, because it may take many years, even decades, to thoroughly answer a follow-up question. By then, everyone has forgotten about the original reason something got published.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#28
I wonder if there is a very simple effect involving blood flow to the head. When you sleep, you lie horizontally, and so presumably it's easier for blood to circulate through your entire body. Maybe if you don't get enough horizontal time, it leads to head related problems like dementia and hair loss.

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#29
post #20

In contrast, a quasi-causal analysis (via Mendelian randomization) found no causal effect of sleep duration on Alzheimer's risk. > There was little evidence to support associations of increased sleep duration with ... Alzheimer's disease risk [OR = 0.89 (95% CI = 0.67-1.18); P = 0.41]. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31062029/

There are other forms of dementia than Alzheimer's.

Are there causal analyses of sleep on those other forms of dementia?

Re: Association of sleep duration in middle and old age with incidence of dementia

#30
I think reading the entire article is important here.

My initial response was that the headline writer was sloppy about risk, correlation and causation, but towards the end it notes some studies where one or more nights of poor sleep appeared to cause measurable increases in substances that are present in elevated levels in dementia patients. If those studies did a reasonable job of showing causation, then this could be an extension of that work.

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