Can Sleep Apnea Treatment Prevent Alzheimer’s?

Your ability to remember and focus on daily tasks is extremely important, and maintaining both well into your golden years can largely be affected by the quality of your sleep. If you’re one of the millions of Americans who snores every night, you might actually be suffering from sleep apnea, a condition that causes you to stop breathing periodically during sleep. According to new research recently conducted by the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, a lack of quality sleep can actually cause a person to experience brain damage over time and even increase their risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Read on to learn how sleep apnea treatment in Jupiter could be essential to helping you prevent dementia!

What the Study Found

In the study we just mentioned, researchers monitored the sleep of 1,700 older adults using a device that kept track of their oxygen levels throughout the night. Afterward, they were asked to take some tests to measure their cognitive function.

For those who had an oxygen saturation level of less than 90%, which is a clear marker for sleep apnea, they were shown to perform much worse on tests that pertained to memory and concentration than those who had a more healthy oxygen level.

How Sleep Apnea Damages the Brain

This study gives us just a small hint about how sleep apnea can potentially affect brain function. When a person has sleep apnea, their body, and more specifically, their brain, is starved of oxygen on a nightly basis. This can easily cause damage to the brain’s blood vessels and even spark an inflammatory response that could lead to nerve cell loss (which is what primarily causes people to have dementia).

Over time, this can seriously wreak havoc on the brain’s abilities! Plus, for the 20% of the population that has a genetic trait that makes them more likely to develop Alzheimer’s, APOE-ε4, sleep apnea has actually been shown to make them much more likely to develop the disease.

What You Can Do

If you or a loved one are experiencing any of the common signs of sleep apnea (loud snoring, daily exhaustion, morning headaches and sore throats, memory issues), then it’s imperative that you get a sleep test, which you can have organized by your primary care doctor. A sleep test will determine if you have sleep apnea, and from there, your doctor can help you get the appropriate treatment.

Everyone deserves to have a full night’s rest, and everyone also deserves to have a brain that’s firing on all cylinders no matter their age.  While sleep apnea can pose quite a risk for your brain if left untreated, it’s very easy to handle with the proper care. So, if any of the symptoms we listed above sound familiar, be sure to contact your doctor today. Your brain will thank you for it!

About the Author

Dr. Kenneth Mogell is a certified sleep dentist who has been serving Jupiter for over 30 years. At his practice, he can help patients get sleep testing in Jupiter and even provide custom-made sleep apnea treatment using oral appliance therapy. To learn more about the warning signs of sleep apnea, or to get help scheduling a sleep test, he can be contacted through his website.