Your sleep habits reveal more about the health of the brain than you think. Although the lack of sleep is widely known to have an impact on mood, cause fatigue and even cause long-term brain damage, what about sleeping regularly? It is not as beneficial as you might suppose it, and new research suggests that it can be an even larger red flag.
In a recent studyThe researchers examined the impact of both short sleep and regular sleep on the human brain and found that, while being too little asleep is linked to the depression and narrowing of the brain in emotional regions, sleep regularly too can be an early sign of cognitive decline, Alzheimer, even schizophrenia.
“This study represents a paradigm shift in the way we understand the relationship between sleep and health. Sleep is often an underlying cause of health problems, while long sleep tends to reflect pre-existing conditions. These results highlight the importance of personalized interventions to approach the unique and long-lived biological paths”, ” said Researcher Professor Jianfeng Feng of the University of Warwick who led the study.
To discover the link, the researchers asked almost half a million adults aged 38 to 73 years of the British Biobanque database, a simple question on the number of hours they fall asleep in one day. Based on their answers, the participants were divided into two groups: “short sleepers” (those who get less than 7 hours) and “long sleepers” (those exceeding 7 hours).
They then analyzed the genetic data of participants, brain imaging analyzes and overall health results to understand how sleeping duration could shape brain function and long -term cognitive health.
The regular short -term sleep was linked to psychological problems, such as low mood and fatigue, and muscles and poorer skeletal health. Brain analyzes have shown that short sleepers have reduced brain material in the brain areas involved in emotion and increased the risk of conditions such as depression, heart disease and obesity.
However, sleeping for too long was linked to cognitive decline, higher inflammation and good metabolic health, a drop in “good” cholesterol levels. Brain analyzes have shown a loss of brain material in the fields associated with memory and risk areas known for degenerative diseases such as long sleep sessions, rather than research.
Based on the study, the researchers suggest that long sleep and short sleep are two “biologically distinct” processes, with their own genetic associations.
“Our ultimate goal is to build a complete sleep health profile through human life, providing usable information for individuals at each stage of life,” added Professor Feng.
(tagstranslate) Sleep