After analyzing the sleep patterns of more than 27,000 middle-aged and older adults, researchers discovered that those with the worst sleep habits had brains that were, on average, a full year older than their actual age.
The study focused on five key sleep habits that biologically increase brain age:
Staying up late at night
Suffering from insomnia
Snoring
Sleeping less than 7 hours a night
Excessive daytime sleepiness
Researchers have considered each of these habits to be an independent factor that contributes to accelerating brain aging.
The results showed that each bad sleep habit a person has adds an extra half year to their biological brain age. Staying up late and snoring had the greatest impact of all.
Most worryingly, 59% of the study participants suffered from poor sleep quality, while less than half (only 41%) had healthy sleep habits.
These figures show that sleep problems are a common phenomenon affecting the majority of people, increasing their risk to general health and brain health in the long term.
Scientists believe that the reason behind this phenomenon lies in the inflammation resulting from lack of sleep, as a lack of nighttime rest stimulates inflammatory responses in the body that may, over time, lead to mental damage and an increased risk of developing diseases such as dementia.
The importance of these results lies in the fact that they provide compelling evidence that maintaining healthy sleep is not a luxury, but an absolute necessity for maintaining long-term brain health, especially since all participants in the study did not show any signs of neurological diseases at the beginning, which confirms the role of lifestyle factors in maintaining brain youth.
The study was published in the journal eBioMedicine.
