Sleeping more or less hours has the same effect

Sleeping more or less hours has the same effect

A new study revealed that sleeping for seven and a half hours is the "ideal time" to preserve the brain and prevent Alzheimer's disease.

The results of the study showed that those who used to get 8 hours of sleep each night, may want to set the alarm half an hour earlier than the usual time, while noting that those who sleep for very short or very long periods suffer from cognitive decline over time, according to the study. British newspaper "Daily Mail".

Brendan Lucy, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Washington's Center for Sleep Medicine, said the study findings suggest that "there is a median, or preferred duration, range for total sleep time that ensures that cognitive performance is stable over time."

Lucy also explained that shorter and longer periods of sleep were associated with worse cognitive performance, possibly due to poor sleep or poor sleep quality.

Alzheimer's proteins

In the study, published in the journal Brain, 100 elderly volunteers with an average age of 75 slept with a small screen attached to their foreheads most nights to measure brain activity while they slept for an average of four and a half hours.

The researchers also drew samples from the brain's cerebrospinal fluid, which is found within the tissues surrounding the brain and spinal cord, to measure levels of Alzheimer's proteins.

The results showed that the cognitive scores of the groups who slept for the equivalent of less than five and a half hours or more than seven and a half hours per night decreased.

It is noteworthy that previous research had found that memory loss, confusion, slowing down in learning new things, and all symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are mainly related to lack of sleep, in contrast to the results of the recent study, which proved that the increase or decrease affects cognitive performance, both.