A night of proper sleep in something which we all need, but did you know sleeping too much or less, both can have a bad impact on your brain?
Yes, that is true; recently a new study suggests that too much sleep or too little of sleep both might contribute to the declining state of your thinking process. Too much sleep is for 10 hours and even more hours at night and too little sleep is for about four hours or even fewer hours at night. So what’s the ideal amount of sleeping time is a question which always strikes our mind, well it is said that a seven-hour of sleep at night is perfect for a healthy lifestyle.
Proper sleep is very important because it plays a vital role in our physical health, it helps in repairing our heart and blood vessels, like the ongoing sleep deficiency leads to a high risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney disease, and stroke. Where it is also seen in the reports that a good sleeper tends to gain weight and calories. A proper amount of sleeping helps in increasing our immune system too. While too much sleep or too little sleep both can lead to depression as well.
According to a study by author Yanjun Ma, from Peking University Clinical Research Institute, in China, said that “cognitive function should be monitored in individuals with insufficient or excessive sleep”, Though he cautioned that study can’t prove that too little or too much sleep causes mental (“cognitive”) decline, only that there appears to be an association.”
The National Sleep Foundation states that sleep is essential because it lets our body and mind recharge a little bit and the right amount of sleep helps us preventing mental and other diseases.
“Without enough sleep, the brain cannot function properly, impairing concentration, clear thinking, and memory-processing. But the mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. It’s possible that inflammation might be related to excessive sleep,” Ma said.
He added, “Too little sleep might increase cerebrospinal fluid levels of amyloid plaque and tau protein, which are symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Sam Gandy, associate director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in New York City, mentioned, “More than any other time in the circadian cycle, during sleep, the brain’s glymphatic system is active in washing out excess levels of toxins, including amyloid-beta peptide.”
Therefore every person has some optimum balance between sleep and amyloid clearance, one can tip to other direction with too much or too less sleep, and the technology for individual optimization has not been generally rolled out to the level of toxins in the brain, but this looks to be an important emerging area, he continued.
Sleep apnea joins the optimizing sleep and amyloid clearance which is a treatable factor for heavy late-life cognitive decline shows reports. A team also collected data of more than 20,000 men and women for conducting the research.