Sleep Interruptions In 30s And 40s Can Impact The Mind Later In Life: Study

Sleep disruptions can have many causes, ranging from everyday stress to anxiety and overthinking. Poor lifestyle choices can also have an impact.

It is true that not getting enough sleep at night can harm your physical and mental health, but the extent of cognitive damage was assessed recently in a study that found that people who suffer from disrupted sleep at night in their 30s and 40s are more likely to suffer from memory and thinking problems a decade later. Sleep disruptions can have many causes, ranging from everyday stress to anxiety and overthinking. Poor lifestyle choices can also have an impact.

Published in the journal 'Neurology', the study involved 526 participants whose duration and sleep quality were examined for 11 years to understand how it affected their cognitive function. During the research, the participants wore a wrist monitor for three consecutive days, one year apart, and slept for six hours on average, according to a press statement. Their bedtimes and wake times were also recorded in a 'sleep diary'.

The statement further read that the study participants completed a "sleep quality survey" with scores ranging from zero to 21; higher the score, poorer the sleep quality.

The findings

Per the findings, 239 people, or 46 per cent of participants, reported poor sleep with a score higher than five. There were 175 people with the most disrupted sleep, of which 44 had poor cognitive performance 10 years later. The press statement revealed that even after "adjusting for age, gender, race, and education", people who had the most disrupted sleep were more than twice as likely to suffer from poor cognitive performance when compared with those who had the least-disrupted sleep.

According to sleepfoundation.org, getting enough hours of high-quality sleep "fosters attention and concentration". Sleep also supports numerous other aspects of cognition, including memory, problem-solving, creativity, emotional processing, and judgment. It states that for people with sleep deprivation, insomnia, sleep apnea, or other conditions that prevent them from getting adequate rest, "short-term daytime cognitive impairment" is common. "Improving sleep quality can boost cognitive performance, promote sharper thinking, and may reduce the likelihood of age-related cognitive decline," it adds.