Researchers from The Center for Brain Health discovered that older people with sleep apnea or those who snore when they sleep experience cognitive and memory decline 10 years earlier than those who do not have the disorder.
Experts believe that snoring has something to do with higher rate of mental decline in older people. The American Sleep Apnea Association defines the condition, as an involuntary cessation of breathing that occurs while the patient is asleep characterized by snoring. It affects around 18 million Americans and it is as common as diabetes.
The study also confirms that older people who developed Alzheimer's disease had it by age 77 which is earlier than the average age of 90 for those who do not have sleep apnea.
"We didn't find that snoring causes dementia," lead author Dr. Ricardo S. Osorio of The Center for Brain Health at NYU School of Medicine in New York told Fox News.
"We found that in those people that reported that they had sleep apnea, and were not treating it, the age of decline was earlier," he added.
To land to their findings, the researchers analyzed medical histories for 2,470 people ages 55 to 90 years old. They were grouped into those who are free of memory and cognitive problems, those in the early states of mental decline, and those with full-blown Alzheimer's disease.
"The age of onset of MCI for people whose breathing problems were treated was almost identical to that of people who did not have any breathing problems at all. Given that so many older adults have sleep breathing problems, these results are exciting -- we need to examine whether using CPAP could possibly help prevent or delay memory and thinking problems," study author Ricardo Osorio, MD, with the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York told Science Daily.
So he recommended, "If your partner tells you you snore, then you should maybe talk to your physician."