A recent study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) found that middle-aged adults who get little sleep age their brains more quickly.
According to a press release, the average age of the 589 participants in this study was 40 years old, whereas other research has concentrated on older folks.
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Five years separated the individuals’ responses to two sleep questionnaires. They had brain scans fifteen years later.
Using MRI data, we estimated the amount of brain shrinkage proportional to brain age using a machine learning technique.
We demonstrated that there was a strong correlation between brain aging and poor sleep that lasted for more than five years, particularly when it was associated with symptoms of insomnia.
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Short sleep length, poor sleep quality, difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, early morning wakeup, and daytime tiredness were the six poor sleep characteristics that the researchers examined while assessing the quality of sleep.
