So if Alzheimer's is the degeneration of brain cells leading to memory loss and breakdown of other mental functions, and sleep is typically touted as a way to consolidate memories, does sleep aid in the process of repairing/healing cells in the brain? Does the lack of consolidation of memory (lack of sleep) lead to some kind of disjointed collection of neurons, leading to a condition such as Alzheimer's?
tl;dr, from this source and related others: The vertebrate CNS has its own waste clearance system, called the "glymphatic system", which serves a similar function as the lymphatic system does for the rest of the organism. During slow-wave sleep, neurons contract to increase the volume of extracellular space, which aids the glymphatic system in clearing toxins such as the β-amyloids which recent research strongly implicates as a risk factor for Alzheimer's. It is therefore reasonable to suspect that restriction of slow-wave sleep, such that this clearance cannot occur or can't run to completion, itself poses a risk of Alzheimer's, and perhaps other disorders, later in life.
What I was able to read and the title itself has always interested me, as someone who drinks a lot of coffee to get through the day efficiently. I can easily correlate coffee intake with quality of sleep, and it does worry me.
So far I've felt OK about sacrificing weekday sleep quality by making up deep sleep on the weekends. Not sure if the article talks about this or not, but it helps me.. "sleep at night" so to speak :-)
I wish people wouldn't link to articles that have paywalls, most people here are not going to pay just to read, Maybe someday there will be a universal penny per read system that doesn't suck, then it will be fine.
Just on the point about the universal penny per read system, Google Contributor seems to be trying again. They've got a beta program running in Australia, with one of our newspapers and Business Insider (plus a handful of others). For website owners there's details here:
