Sleeping Six Hours or Less Linked to Higher Dementia Risk, Study Finds

Middle-age adults who sleep six or fewer hours a night may be at higher risk of developing dementia in later life, according to a new study published Tuesday in Nature Communications and cited by the Wall Street Journal . The research found that men and women age 50 or 60 who regularly slept six hours or less each night were more likely than those who slept seven hours to be diagnosed with dementia. Even after controlling for cardiac, metabolic, and mental-health issues, the research team determined that 50-year-olds who were sleeping six hours or less a night had a 22 percent higher risk of developing dementia later in life. Sixty-year-olds, meanwhile, were 37 percent more likely to develop the disorder. For the results, a group of European researchers looked at survey data for approximately 8,000 adults in the United Kingdom over 25 years and linked that data with dementia diagnoses in electronic health records. The authors cautioned that the findings can't officially establish whether less sleep causes dementia.