Suffering From Alzheimer's? Sleep Apnea May Be the Cause
The study on Alzheimer's and sleep apnea
To prove the concept that a condition like sleep apnea that causes sleep disturbances may also be behind the increased prevalence of Alzheimer’s, researchers selected 35 healthy individuals without any sleep disorders. They divided them into two groups so that one group will act as a control group, while another as experiment group.
In an experiment, all individuals were asked to sleep in the lab conditions, in calm and comfortable conditions. Out of 35, 17 of them also wore headphones and sensors to monitor the brain activity. When these 17 individuals went into deep sleep, a sound signal was sent automatically to prevent them drifting to deep sleep (NREM),which means that though these individuals were able to sleep, they could not enjoy deep sleep. The next day, this group complained about the tiredness and sleepiness as compared to the control group.
At the end of the experiment, they took cerebral fluid from all the participants. Cerebral fluid is collected by puncturing the lower part of the spinal cord with a special needle.