New research shows that if you’re in your 40s or 50s and you’re having trouble sleeping, it’s not a good sign for your mental health as you age.
“Our study used brain scans to determine the brain age of the participants,” said study lead author Clemens Cavellus, from the University of California, Berkeley.
The study suggests that less sleep in middle age is associated with about three years of additional brain aging, he added.
The research was funded by the National Institute on Aging and is published in the journal Neurology.
The team of researchers focused on 589 people with an average age of about 40 years. Each provided information about their sleep at the start of the study at age 40 and again until age 45.
After controlling for potential factors such as age, sex, high blood pressure and diabetes, the team found that people with four or more poor sleep characteristics had brains that were “older” by an average of 2.6 years.
On the other hand, people with two or three poor sleep characteristics had brains that were 1.6 years older by age 55 than those without sleep problems.
