Sleep and Alzheimers
29-03-2013
One of the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease is sleep disturbance. This degenerative brain disorder affects a person's thoughts, memory, speech, and ability to carry out daily activities, making a normal life increasingly difficult to live. With Alzheimer’s disease the loss of brain tissue that leads to loss of mental abilities may also disrupt the sleep/wake cycle, which may cause sleep problems, night time wandering, and agitation.
This has lead researchers to look into using sleep disturbance as a means of detecting potential future sufferers. While there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, there are a number of palliative treatments that can help slow the progression of the diseases, giving those suffers some important time to sort out their affairs before the disease claims them.
Perhaps even more exciting is the possibility that the studying sleep may hold some clues in the possible cure for this disease as the connections between the cause of the sleep disturbance and the onset of the disease are uncovered.
If you are having trouble sleeping do not panic as there are a huge number of reasons for sleep disturbance ranging from grinding your teeth through to stress, from depression through to environmental factors, though if you are in your 60s or older it may pay to visit a medical expert.
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