A recent study revealed that irregular sleeping patterns might accelerate the aging of a person’s brain, partly by increasing inflammation.
According to a research published in the journal eBioMedicine, individuals brains aged faster as they scored worse on a five-point scale of sleep quality,
A postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology and senior investigator Abigail Dove stated, “The gap between brain age and chronological age widened by about six months for every one-point decrease in healthy sleep score.”
For the study, researchers evaluated brain scans for over 27,500 middle-aged people and seniors from the UK.
They provided information regarding their sleep quality, and blood samples to check inflammation levels in your blood.
The scans revealed that individual’s brains aged faster as their quality of sleep diminished.
Furthermore, researchers found nearly 10% of the link between poor sleep and accelerated brain aging.
Dove stated, “Our findings provide evidence that poor sleep may contribute to accelerated brain aging and point to inflammation as one of the underlying mechanisms.”
“Since sleep is modifiable, it may be possible to prevent accelerated brain aging and perhaps even cognitive decline through healthier sleep,” Dove added.
Moreover, the scientists discovered that rotten sleep might block the brain’s waste clearance system, which leads to an increased level of toxic substances in the brain, including amyloid beta and tau proteins that is tied with a neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's.
However, researchers noted that the study failed to show any link between poor sleep and brain aging, not a direct cause-and-effect link.
