The study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, looked at 140 people with an average age of 72 participating in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging.

“We have also seen associations between poor sleep quality and higher blood pressure, and high blood pressure can lead to brain lesions or stroke,” said Knutson, who was not involved in the new research.

“Their findings are consistent with the literature that indicates sleep, including slow-wave sleep, plays an important role in maintaining brain health,” said sleep specialist Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of neurology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Lower levels of white matter have also been connected to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and irritability. Having more white matter hyperintensities can slow the brain’s ability to process information, pay attention and remember, experts say. However, no treatment exists for such changes in the brain, “so we need to find ways to prevent them from happening or getting worse.” Carvalho said. “The association with sleep apnea was only unveiled when we isolated severe cases, suggesting that mild to moderate sleep apnea may not be significantly associated with white matter changes,” he said. Diego Carvalho, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

When the brain is scanned, small white spots, called white matter hyperintensities, show the extent of the damage.įor every 10% decrease in time spent in deep sleep, there was an increase of white matter hyperintensities in the brain similar to the effect of being 2.3 years older, said study coauthor Dr. White matter is the tissue that forms connections between brain cells and the rest of the nervous system. People with severe sleep apnea who spent less time in deep, also known as slow-wave sleep, had more damage to the white matter of the brain than people who had more slow-wave sleep, according to the study. Sleep problems linked to fivefold rise in stroke risk, study says

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