Seniors: Sleep sharpens the memory

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MunichSenile bed escape: With increasing age, sleeping often becomes a problem. That is more than annoying: It should be six to nine hours - otherwise the brain will work worse. This was found out by American researchers who examined how important sleep is for older people. The result: sleep may also be essential to prevent senile dementia.

Theresa E. Gildner's team from the University of Oregon evaluated data from more than 30,000 test subjects. The study participants were older than 50 years and came from China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia or South Africa. They were asked about their average length of sleep and had to assess their sleep quality on a five-point scale. They then completed five memory tests: memorize a list of words and play them back immediately or after a certain time, recite a memorized row of numbers forwards and backwards and enumerate as many animals as possible without repeating themselves.

Not too much and not too little

Those who slept between six and nine hours did best on the tests. Those who got less night's sleep had a poorly working brain. But too much sleep also counteracted memory performance. For more than nine hours, a similar effect was found as with too little night sleep. "A good, long enough sleep could help slow the declining memory performance in old age," says Gildner. It may also work against senile dementia.

Sleep Master Mexico

As an interesting side effect of the study, the scientists learned something about the different punching habits of men and women or people of different nationalities. In principle, men rated their sleep better than women. In fact, the female sex slept more overall. People sleep the longest in South Africa and the shortest in India. The Mexicans reported the highest quality of sleep. (away)

Source: Gildner T.et al .: Associations between Sleep Duration, Sleep Quality, and Cognitive Test Performance among Older Adults from Six Middle Income Countries: Results from the Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE). Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2014; DOI: 10.5664 / jcsm.3782

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