A new study published in Annals of Neurology found that the use of sleeping pills could reduce the buildup of toxic proteins in the brainwashing fluid each night. Will it be really convenient to use them?
After sugar that predicts Alzheimer’s, let’s go back to talking about this pathology. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that people who take the suvorexant (a drug normally prescribed to combat insomnia) for two consecutive nights in a sleep clinic, they experimented a slight drop in two proteins that build up in Alzheimer’s: beta-amyloid to fight.
Be warned though, as while sleeping pills can help in this regard,”it would be premature for people who are worried about developing Alzheimer’s to interpret it as a reason to start taking suvorexant every nightsays neurologist Brendan Lucey of the Washington University Sleep Medicine Center, who led the research.
The study lasted just two nights and involved 38 participants aged 45 to 65 who received one of two doses of suvorexant or a placebo pill. An hour later, the researchers began drawing their cerebrospinal fluid, continuing on collect samples every two hours for 36 hours while the participants were asleep or awake, in order to measure changes in protein levels.
There were no differences in sleep between the groups, yet beta-amyloid concentrations were reduced by 10 to 20% with one dose of suvorexant, compared to a placebo. The higher dose of the drug also momentarily reduced levels of hyperphosphorylated tau, a modified form of the tau protein linked to tangle formation and cell death. However, this effect was only seen with some forms of the protein and its concentrations increased within 24 hours of taking the sleeping pill.
Although the research is short-lived and involves a small group of healthy adults, it is an intriguing demonstration of the link between sleep and the molecular markers of Alzheimer’s. What scientific research has lately understood is that i Sleep disturbances can be an early warning sign of Alzheimer’s disease that precedes other symptoms, such as memory loss and cognitive decline.
Bottom line, the use of sleeping pills for prolonged periods it is not an ideal solution even for those who have little sleep. In fact, it is quite easy to become addicted to it, in addition to the fact that the real causes, organic or psychological, that trigger insomnia are not investigated. The same authors say improving sleep hygiene may be a sensible approach to improving overall brain health at any age.