New Research Links Dementia With Poor Sleep

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New Research Links Dementia With Poor Sleep
For many years scientists have wondered if there
is a connection between sleep and dementia, and
now researchers at the University of East Anglia
have set up a special sleep unit to explore the
possibility. There are over three quarter of a
million people living with dementia in the United
Kingdom and that figure is set to rise by over a
million in six years. It is not uncommon for
people suffering from dementia to experience
disturbed sleep. However, scientists at UAEs
School of Health Sciences are working to discover
if Alzheimers may bring on restless sleep or, on
the other hand, if insomnia is an early sign of
the condition.
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Initially, the sleep unit will explore if healthy
individuals with a greater risk of Alzheimers
may be more prone to disrupted sleep and how it
impacts their body clock. Experts believe poor
sleeping habits may be an indicator of
Alzheimers as well as other brain disorders. All
in all, you need a restful sleep for good overall
brain health, affecting such areas as cognition,
memory and concentration. The aim of the study is
to determine if the disease affects how much you
sleep or is lack of sleep contributing to the
illness. In the course of the trial, subjects
volunteering for the study will spend the night
in a sleep unit fashioned like a hotel room with
its own bathroom. They will be supervised by
sleep experts, where sensors will monitor their
brain activity. Scientists will also test their
cognition, balance, attention and co-ordination
during their stay at the unit.
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Subjects will have undergone screening,
encompassing psychological and genetic tests.
Volunteers will be asked to keep a sleep diary
and wear a device on their wrist, monitoring how
much sleep activity they get at home. They will
then engage in ongoing lab sessions over three
nights which may include taking various short
naps or staying awake for the whole night once,
to assess how they respond to sleep
deprivation. According to researchers, the lab
sessions will help scientists get a better
understanding of how sleep and the body clock may
be connected to the genetic possibility of
Alzheimers. They feel their findings may be
useful in developing other studies which could be
used in the fight against the disease, affecting
thousands of people across the country.
The Original article Published at Beds Glasgow
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a-with-poor-sleep/