Older adults are more prone to dementia and death due to lack of sleep at night

The elderly are often seen struggling for sleep and waking up again and again at night. They have a higher risk of developing dementia or dying early from any cause. This is revealed in a new research. A CNN report published in the Journal of Sleep Research indicated that people who regularly experienced difficulty falling asleep had a 49 percent increased risk of dementia, and those who frequently woke up at night and had difficulty falling asleep again. They also had a 39 percent increased risk of dementia. 

Harvard Medical School researcher Rebecca Robbins said, "We found a strong association between persistent difficulty falling asleep and waking during the night and dementia and early death from any cause, regardless of whether we measured depression, gender, income, education and chronic." Things like situations have to be controlled." For the study, the team analyzed data collected by the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), which conducts annual personal interviews with a nationally representative sample of 6,376 Medicare beneficiaries. 

The new study examined data from between 2011 and 2018, focusing on people in the highest risk category. Those people said they had sleep problems most nights or almost every night. Self-reported sleep difficulties by participants in the study were then compared to each participant's medical records. The study found that people who had trouble sleeping most nights had a nearly 44 percent increased risk of early death from any cause. 

Those who said they often woke up at night and struggled to sleep had a slightly higher risk – a 56 percent increased risk of early death from any cause. "These results suggest that sleep every night, plays a very important role in reducing our long-term risk for neural cognitive decline and mortality," Robbins said.