Doctors have released numerous studies throughout the years showing how important getting a good night’s rest is for your body.  We’ve heard about the many health benefits, but there has never been a study showing a link between a lack of sleep and an increased potential of getting Alzheimer’s disease.  According to a study recently published in JAMA Neurology, even healthy brains have an increased level of the protein that forms the signature tangles in Alzheimer’s disease when someone gets little sleep.

Doctors seem to believe if a person gets a healthy amount of sleep consistently that it reduces the amount of amyloid-beta (the protein) in your brain.  They also claim in people who repeatedly get a lack of sleep, the amyloid-beta concentration may build up and be a cause for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.  While doctors aren’t certain this is a link, they do know in Alzheimer’s disease one of the hallmark features is the increased amount of amyloid-beta in someone’s brain.

Testing first completed on mice showed a decreased amount of amyloid-beta in those that had a good night’s sleep.  The suggestion was a solid evening of sleep helped clean the protein out of the mice’s system.

The doctors then tested this theory on 26 middle-aged men with normal sleep patterns to see their protein levels before and after an evening of sleep.  A catheter was put into their spine to take fluid samples to determine protein levels.  Some men were kept up while others were allowed to sleep comfortably.  Those who got a good night’s sleep had a 6 percent lower level of the protein than their counterparts in the study who did not get the same amount of sleep.

“We think the beta is cleared from the brain or less produced during sleep,”Dr. Jurgen Claassen, from Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, said.

To learn more about this study please click here.