Too Much Sleep Can Age Our Brains: So Can Too Little

Too much sleep in middle age appears to be associated with cogitive decline in later years. That’s the bad news. The other bad news is this: too little sleep also appears to be associated with cognitive decline. Yikes! What’s a middle-aged sleeper to do? HealthDay reports that researchers at the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London Medical School collected data on 5,431 men and women, aged 35 to 55 in 1985. In 1997-1999, the participants were asked how many hours they slept on an average week night, and were asked the same question in 2003-2004 after an average 5.4 years of follow-up. Those who reported changes in their sleep patterns were then compared with people whose sleep duration stayed the same over the course of the study. In 2003-2004, each individual was given a battery of standard tests to assess his or her memory, reasoning, vocabulary, global cognitive status and verbal fluency. The researchers found that women who slept seven hours per night had the highest score for every cognitive measure, followed by those who had six hours of sleep. For men, cognitive function was similar for those who reported sleeping six, seven or eight hours. Wait, there’s more: less than six hours of sleep — or more than eight hours — were associated with lower scores.

Read more in HealthDay.