Better Sleep May Be Incredibly Important to Alzheimer’s Risk.

Sleep disturbances are common. Sometimes patients have come in with sleep problems that are clearly related to temporal issues (such as stressors like a death in the family, work stress, etc).

It is the people that come in with chronic issues which I think are challenging. Some patients have come on while on medications chronically to help with sleep. One concern is that they end up being too dependent on medications to sleep. When seeing things like this, it makes me wonder if patients on sleep medications chronically are altering their sleep architecture enough that it still puts them at risk for things.

Some sleep issues, such as obstructive sleep apnea, do put one at risk for things like high blood pressure, irregular heart rhythms, etc. luckily for that things like weight loss, CPAP machines, etc can help without the use of medications. This article does make the case for getting good sleep regularly!