The illness of Alzheimer’s hits today about 5% of people over the age of 60. In the last decade, the sensitivity and attention of doctors and families towards this pathology has increased, and fortunately more and more patients are diagnosed before the age of 65.
Precisely the greater centrality of this degenerative disease, which affects the quality of life of many people (it is estimated that in Italy there are 600 thousand people with Alzheimer’s), contributed to highlighting the news just published in the prestigious international scientific journal Acta Neurophatologica Communications: thanks to a study conducted by the teams of Sleep Medicine Center of the Molinette hospital of the Città della Salute with researchers fromUniversity of Turin, proved for the first time the direct link between poor quality sleep andonset of Alzheimer’s.
There cause of Alzheimer’s disease looks just like the fragmented sleepthat is, the one characterized by interruptions due to insomnia, sleep apnea, snoring, restless legs syndrome and other causes that disturb the Deep sleep. In fact it is during this phase that the glymphatic system eliminates waste substances that our brain accumulates during wakefulness and which, if not disposed of, damage neurons and nerve cells. «Consequently – says the professor Alessandro Cicolin, director of the Sleep Medicine Center of the Molinette hospital of the Città della Salute in Turin – we must obligatorily eliminate them if we want to have a healthy brain, a too fragmented sleep instead sends our cleaning system haywire, that is the glymphatic system, which is no longer able to dispose of neurotoxins ». Like protein beta – amyloid which impairs cognitive functions. In this regard, explains the Professor Michela Guglielmotto of the Neuroscience Institute of Cavalieri Ottolenghi (NICO): «we have seen that after sleep fragmentation, beta – amyloid increases significantly in all brain areas but mainly in the areas involved in sleep regulation».
The study also underlines how, in subjects predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease, disturbed sleep can favor the establishment of neurodegenerative processes from an early age; not only that, but a vicious circle can be created, because the neurodegenerative processes themselves, characteristic of the disease, can in turn compromise the regulation of sleep, accelerating the progression of Alzheimer’s.
Treating disturbed sleep by turning it into quality sleep could slow the progression. “Sleep is what really makes us live in a healthy body,” concludes Cicolin.
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Source: Vanity Fair
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