Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

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GenePoole0304
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Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

Post by GenePoole0304 »

another report of this sleep disturbance link. maybe I should set up the hammock in the room over looking the garden to keep my head up like the other article I posted a while back which helps drainage.

now if only I could be a good full nights sleep without the early morning good Samaritan chauffeuring I have to do!
time for a hot coffee / choco-latte as the heating man does not come for another 3 days!

"Berkeley neuroscientists connect a deficit of restorative slumber to an accumulation of beta-amyloid

University of California - Berkeley
IMAGE

IMAGE: Heavy deposits of the toxic protein, beta-amyloid, shown in red in the brain on the right, are linked to poor sleep and may be paving the way for Alzheimer's disease.... view more

Credit: (Photo courtesy of Bryce Mander and Matthew Walker)

Sleep may be a missing piece in the Alzheimer's disease puzzle.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found compelling evidence that poor sleep - particularly a deficit of the deep, restorative slumber needed to hit the save button on memories - is a channel through which the beta-amyloid protein believed to trigger Alzheimer's disease attacks the brain's long-term memory.

"Our findings reveal a new pathway through which Alzheimer's disease may cause memory decline later in life," said UC Berkeley neuroscience professor Matthew Walker, senior author of the study to be published Monday, June , in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Excessive deposits of beta-amyloid are key suspects in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, a virulent form of dementia caused by the gradual death of brain cells. An unprecedented wave of aging baby boomers is expected to make Alzheimer's disease, which has been diagnosed in more than 40 million people, one of the world's fastest-growing and most debilitating public health concerns.

The good news about the findings, Walker said, is that poor sleep is potentially treatable and can be enhanced through exercise, behavioral therapy and even electrical stimulation that amplifies brain waves during sleep, a technology that has been used successfully in young adults to increase their overnight memory.

"This discovery offers hope," he said. "Sleep could be a novel therapeutic target for fighting back against memory impairment in older adults and even those with dementia."

The study was co-led by UC Berkeley neuroscientists Bryce Mander and William Jagust, a leading expert on Alzheimer's disease. The team has received a major National Institutes of Health grant to conduct a longitudinal study to test their hypothesis that sleep is an early warning sign or biomarker of Alzheimer's disease.

While most research in this area has depended on animal subjects, this latest study has the advantage of human subjects recruited by Jagust, a professor with joint appointments at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, the School of Public Health and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"Over the past few years, the links between sleep, beta-amyloid, memory, and Alzheimer's disease have been growing stronger," Jagust said. "Our study shows that this beta-amyloid deposition may lead to a vicious cycle in which sleep is further disturbed and memory impaired."

Using a powerful combination of brain imaging and other diagnostic tools on 26 older adults who have not been diagnosed with dementia, researchers looked for the link between bad sleep, poor memory and the toxic accumulation of beta-amyloid proteins.

"The data we've collected are very suggestive that there's a causal link," said Mander, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory directed by Walker. "If we intervene to improve sleep, perhaps we can break that causal chain."

A buildup of beta-amyloid has been found in Alzheimer's patients and, independently, in people reporting sleep disorders. Moreover, a 2013 University of Rochester study found that the brain cells of mice would shrink during non-rapid-eye-movement (non-REM) sleep to make space for cerebrospinal fluids to wash out toxic metabolites such as beta-amyloid.

"Sleep is helping wash away toxic proteins at night, preventing them from building up and from potentially destroying brain cells," Walker said. "It's providing a power cleanse for the brain."

Specifically, the researchers looked at how the quantity of beta-amyloid in the brain's medial frontal lobe impairs deep non-REM sleep, which we need to retain and consolidate fact-based memories.

In a previous study, Mander, Jagust and Walker found that the powerful brain waves generated during non-REM sleep play a key role in transferring memories from the hippocampus - which supports short-term storage for information - to longer-term storage in the frontal cortex. In elderly people, deterioration of this frontal region of the brain has been linked to poor-quality sleep.

For this latest study, researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to measure the accumulation of beta-amyloid in the brain; functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in the brain during memory tasks; an electroencephalographic (EEG) machine to measure brain waves during sleep; and statistical models to analyze all the data.

The research was performed on 26 older adults, between the ages of 65 and 81, who showed no existing evidence of dementia or other neurodegenerative, sleep or psychiatric disorders. First, they each received PET scans to measure levels of beta-amyloid in the brain, after which they were tasked with memorizing 120 word pairs, and then tested on how well they remembered a portion of them.

The study participants then slept for eight hours, during which EEG measured their brain waves. The following morning, their brains were scanned using fMRI as they recalled the remaining word pairs. At this point, researchers tracked activity in the hippocampus, where memories are temporarily stored before they are transferred to the prefrontal cortex.

"The more you remember following a good night of sleep, the less you depend on the hippocampus and the more you use the cortex," Walker said. "It's the equivalent of retrieving files from the safe storage site of your computer's hard drive, rather than the temporary storage of a USB stick."

Overall, the results showed that the study participants with the highest levels of beta-amyloid in the medial frontal cortex had the poorest quality of sleep and, consequently, performed worst on the memory test the following morning, with some forgetting more than half of the information they had memorized the previous day.

"The more beta-amyloid you have in certain parts of your brain, the less deep sleep you get and, consequently, the worse your memory," Walker said. "Additionally, the less deep sleep you have, the less effective you are at clearing out this bad protein. It's a vicious cycle.

"But we don't yet know which of these two factors - the bad sleep or the bad protein - initially begins this cycle. Which one is the finger that flicks the first domino, triggering the cascade?" Walker added.

And that's what the researchers will determine as they track a new set of older adults over the next five years.

"This is a new pathway linking Alzheimer's disease to memory loss, and it's an important one because we can do something about it," Mander said.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 052915.php
aphorist
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Re: Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

Post by aphorist »

In addition to topics like Diet and Exercise, there really should be a section just devoted to sleep. It's critical for long-term neuron health.
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Re: Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

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Regarding sleep apnea - Today I visited ResMed here in San Diego where they issued a monitor for me to perform an at-home sleep study which requires a minimum of 4 solid hours of sleep to provide sufficient data. It used to be that you had to endure a torturous overnight sleep study at a sleep lab (both my mom and my husband have done that). But the technology has advanced and things have changed. So tonight, I will hook myself up to this small unit (connects around the mid-section, nose, and a pulse/oxygen monitor on one finger) and it will monitor my breathing/sleep. Next week, I'll meet with them to analyze the data. This at-home study is free. Yes, they sell CPAP devices so they have financial interests in people needing "ResMed Air Solutions," but it's the data I'm after. Once I meet with them, I can objectively determine with the help of my doc, whether I need the device. One of the steps in Dr. Bredesen's therapeutic program is to "exclude or treat sleep apnea," so that's my mission. I have already ordered "I Sleep Soundly tablets" as per the group's feedback from the Gladstone visit. Thanks for that reference guys!
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KatieS
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Re: Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

Post by KatieS »

SarahAnne, I forgot to compliment Dr. Bredesen on including OSA several times on his list. NYU's study related to which came first, the OSA or the AD should be concluding later this year, but preliminary evidence points towards the benefits of CPAP treatment:

"The researchers found that people who treated their sleep breathing problems with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine were diagnosed with MCI about 10 years later than people whose problems were not treated, or at age 82 instead of age 72.
"The age of onset of MCI for people whose breathing problems were treated was almost identical to that of people who did not have any breathing problems at all," Osorio said. "Given that so many older adults have sleep breathing problems, these results are exciting -- we need to examine whether using CPAP could possibly help prevent or delay memory and thinking problems. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 145635.htm)

Since both my husband and I have OSA (see topic:viewtopic.php?f=4&t=366&p=2794#p2794), I can attest to those benefits. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, can use cpaptalk.com. or a Resmed sleep coach.

For those who just struggle to sleep, remember Stavia's blue light blocking glasses before bed. Colors matter: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/sleeping-in-space/
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Re: Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

Post by Julie G »

How'd your study go, SarahAnne? We're you able to sleep with all of the equipment?

Kudos to Kit for bringing the whole apnea factor to our attention very early in it's discovery as a contributing factor. When I heard the Gladstone team list lack of oxygen as a cause of fragmentation, I instantly made the apnea connection. If ANYONE even mildly suspects this is an issue, do a sleep study. It could literally save or prolong your cognition.
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KatieS
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Re: Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

Post by KatieS »

Linking the HRT & Sleep Apnea topics, it was after I had been on CPAP that I felt so much better, I discontinued the HRT for a few years. It was as if the brain changed and I was no longer estrogen deprived. Even now, I'm only on half-patch of estrogen.

If you're looking for a magic bullet, I would say sleep apnea treatment. Those of us, all E4s, a risk factor itself, with any of these additional risk factors: small jaw, not breast fed, snore, urinate at night more than once or have insomnia/ fatigue (I never had the last two) should discuss this with their doctor. However, many doctors suspect sleep apnea only if you're an obese man. One doctor said to me" If you have sleep apnea, then every one must, and we just have to figure our who to treat". Isn't the answer those with E4?
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Re: Poor sleep linked to toxic buildup of Alzheimer's protein, memory loss

Post by PhillyFree »

Poor sleep raises cortisol, which in turn raises glucose.
We know that insulin resistance and diabetes 2 raise risk of AD.

So many people over age 50 and/or if obese are insulin resistant and don't know it,
since most doctors don't pay much attention until the person comes down with diabetes 2,
then it's much more difficult to turn back the tide.
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