If you’re prone to heavy snoring or sleep apnea, you could also be prone to something a lot more serious: memory and mild cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s, at a much earlier age. So say researchers out of New York University in the journal Neurology. They studied 2,470 people with an average age of 73 and found that those with breathing disorders during sleep experienced some form of cognitive decline more than a decade before those without the breathing problems (at age 77 instead of age 90).
But all is not lost: Those who treated their breathing disorders with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine, however, were able to delay mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s by roughly 10 years. “The age of onset of (mild cognitive impairment) for people whose breathing problems were treated was almost identical to that of people who did not have any breathing problems at all.
Given that so many older adults have sleep breathing problems, these results are exciting. (Snoring and sleep apnea are linked to these health problems, too.)
The relationship between hormones and sleep is multifaceted; hormonal influences can play an important role in breathing during sleep cycles. Restoring, maximizing and balancing hormones using Bioidentical Hormones can help maintain optimum health and vitality, and has shown promise in alleviating sleep apnea.
Sources: Eureka Alert, Neurology, New York Times. The study was published online April 15 in Neurology.
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