New research has found out that longer sleep might cause dementia in 10 years. The same research stated that people who sleep more than nine hours have a higher risk of getting the illness.
People who slept less than nine hours in their earlier age but then changed their sleeping patterns years later will have a higher risk of getting dementia. Meanwhile people who have slept more than nine hours all throughout their life will not increase the risk of getting dementia, New York Times reported. The sleeping pattern is merely a sign and not the cause, researchers have also stated.
According to Medical Xpress, Framingham Heart Study (FHS) studied 2,457 people with the average age of 72. They were observed for ten years. Then, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) studied their sleeping duration. They found out that older people without high school degree that slept for more than nine to ten hours are at a higher risk of getting dementia; even dementia that is related to Alzheimer's disease is also a possibility.
"My suspicion is that this is a compensatory mechanism: that at a time when amyloid is building up in the brain, people may be sleeping longer as the body is reacting and trying to remove it from the brain," said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and the senior author of the study, in Neurology. People with higher education are at less risk of getting dementia as their brain has a higher volume, Dr. Sudha Seshadri added.
People with dementia will increase in the coming years. Americans, age 65 and older, will have the highest number and it might reach 7.1 million by 2025. Screening of people that might get dementia is good. It can advise the person early on so they can decide on their future plans, researchers suggested.
