It’s pretty well known that getting a good night’s rest on a regular basis is very important for your health. It helps in the fight against weight gain and one’s health suffers without adequate sleep. Now we’re learning that overnight disruptions may have detrimental effects on cognitive health.
A new meta-analysis published in the journal Sleep Medicine found that middle-aged adults who suffered from insomnia, nightmares and regular bouts of broken sleep were more likely to face cognitive impairment in their later years.
The counterpoint to these findings, however, is that they were derived from self-reported data from four Scandinavian studies, so the data was not subjected to objective measurement by researchers. But given the large number of participants – two of the studies followed more than 3,300 subjects for over 20 years – the results carry some insight.