If you snore badly, have pauses in your breathing while you sleep, or repeatedly wake up because of breathing problems while you sleep you may be at risk of developing dementia.
Sleep apnea, where you stop breathing occasionally while you sleep, is also called sleep-disordered breathing. People with the problem often snore loudly or gasp for breath as they sleep. The condition is also linked to increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Dementia is also called cognitive impairment, which is defined as a decline in mental ability severe enough to cause problems with daily life.
Researchers recruited nearly 300 healthy women from Maryland; Minneapolis; Portland, OR; and the area around Pittsburgh. They completed tests to show how sharp their minds were and then spent a night in a sleep clinic to find out if they had sleep-related breathing issues and to see what their sleep-wake patterns were. One hundred and five women were found to have sleep-disordered breathing and had an average of 15 or more episodes of interrupted breathing each hour during the night.
Five years later, the researchers re-examined the women. Of the women who had sleep-disordered breathing, 45% had developed mild cognitive impairment or dementia. Only 31% of the women who had no breathing problems during sleep had cognitive impairment. When the researchers took into account differences in weight, age, race, smoking status, education level, blood pressure, and the use of antidepressants or other medications, the women with breathing problems were 85% more likely to have cognitive impairment after five years than those who did not.
This study was a prospective study, which means that it followed the people enrolled in it for several years to see if cognitive problems developed.