Especially for those over 40.
Memoir that flanches, attention disorder, difficulty finding its words … The cognitive decline corresponds to a gradual decrease in mental functions. It often accompanies aging, but can also start earlier and evolve quickly, sometimes announcing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Work published in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease has shown a link between sleep habits and cognitive performance, this quarantine. The authors followed 23,000 subjects for 10 years. Questions on the pace of life made it possible to better understand the effect of the chronotype, that is to say being rather in the morning or evening. There are different chronotypes such as the morning chronotype, the intermediate chronotype, the late chronotype and the extremely late chronotype. Cognitive functions, such as visual creativity and mental organization, were also observed. Other factors have been taken into account such as sleep quality, smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity.
The results suggest that the tardian presents have a more marked cognitive decline over the years. Generally, the “knockout” fail to fall asleep before midnight or 1 in the morning. It is therefore this hour of sleeping that would be particularly harmful for cognition. And the more the falling asleep, the stronger the effect: each hour late in fallow would be associated with a measurable decrease in cognitive functions, such as attention, organization or working memory.
With age advancement, these differences are accentuated. Late chronotypes often have less favorable lifestyle: less restful sleep, more sedentary lifestyle, more alcohol and tobacco. Habits which, in the long term, accelerate the aging of the brain.
