Deep Sleep & Dementia Risk

Here’s a story reported by a CNN journalist on studies looking at depth of sleep and risk of dementia. The good news is the article and the researchers involved refer repeatedly to sleep quality as a key metric in risks for dementia. Specifically, in one study tracking individuals over many years, noticeable declines in the percentage of deep sleep were associated with increasing risk for dementia.

Thus, the take home message was get more deep sleep by improving your sleep quality. Sounds very familiar…I think somebody recently published a book on this topic.

Now, the bad news. No where in the article, including the quotes from the researchers, was there any mention of the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Namely, the greatest single factor causing a person to experience a decline in deep sleep is sleep-disordered breathing. Given the report describes several cardiovascular problems arising in the dementia group, it should have been stated or at least theorized sleep apnea was likely present. Moreover, as sleep apnea is the number one cause of sleep fragmentation, it’s known to be the most common cause of deteriorating deep sleep.

In a nutshell, PAP therapy for the treatment sleep apnea is the number one therapy to regain deep sleep, and no where is this salient point mentioned in the article.

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