(Web Desk) - We all know that not getting enough sleep can be bad for your health, but a new Yale study finds that getting a few extra hours worth of Zs could also have negative effects.
Researchers at Yale University, who published their findings in the Journal of the American Heart Association, found that people who do not get a typical amount of sleep have levels of biomarkers that indicate an increased risk of developing dementia or suffering a stroke.
This included people who got more than the recommended seven to nine hours each night, not just those who did not sleep enough.
“Conditions like stroke or dementia are the end-stage result of a long process that ends tragically,” Santiago Clocchiatti-Touzzo, M.D., author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at Yale, said.
“We want to learn how to prevent these processes before they happen.”
The Yale team focused their research on white matter hypersensitivities, lesions on the brain that can be seen on imaging and are linked to an increased risk of developing dementia or experiencing a stroke.
Using data from the UK Biobank, a massive repository of health and lifestyle data gathered from British citizens, a total of 39,771 middle-aged people were evaluated for the study.
Researchers gathered survey results from the group about how many hours of sleep they received each night and from brain scans gathered by Biobank researchers.
The study included 28,912 who got an “optimal” amount of sleep each night, 8,468 people who did not get enough sleep, and 2,391 that slept too much.
Using the scans, researchers were able to record the number of white matter hypersensitivities each participant had. Previous research has linked the prevalence of these lesions to the development of dementia and other cognitive impairment.
Researchers found that people who did not get enough sleep had more hypersensitivities than their optimal sleep peers. People who slept more had, on average, the same number of hypersensitivities as people who received optimal sleep, but these lesions were denser and had larger levels of damage, Yale researchers say.
“These findings add to the mounting evidence that sleep is a prime pillar of brain health,” Dr. Clocchiatti-Tuozzo continued.
“It also provides evidence toward helping us understand how sleep and sleep duration can be a modifiable risk factor for brain health later in life.”
Researchers concluded that middle-aged people should start thinking about their sleeping habits now to prevent the development of these lesions that can have harmful side effects down the line.