The connection between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease | Peter Attia, M.D. & Matt Walker, Ph.D. 

I've send an e-mail to mister Walker with my literature review. I really hope that he reads it.

@@judokoning can you point us to the literature you've found or go into more detail here?

@@j._7054 I will try. In short: I found in the literature that sleeping patterns change during aging. Until 25 we have deep sleep in the first part of our sleep and REM sleep at the second part of our sleep. During aging the amount of deep sleep changes and also the start of the REM sleep changes. This change happens until the age of 60-64. So when we are 60 we lack deep sleep and we have REM sleep at the start of our sleep cycles (Steiger 2002). There are two hormones involved with these sleep cycles. These are Growth Hormone and Cortisol. The levels of Growth Hormone decline due to an increase in body and visceral fat, decreased physical fitness, and a decrease in sex hormone concentrations physical fitness, and a decrease in sex hormone concentrations (Iranmanesh 1991). The concentration of Cortisol levels increase due to less activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis whcih results in changes in the regulation of stress response. This results in higher cortisol levels (Steiger 2002). Growth Hormone triggers deep sleep while Cortisol triggers REM sleep (Steiger 2002). Changes in sleep patterns happen naturally and the reason that we have problems with it changing is due to getting way older than we should be. So with only the change in sleep patterns we could not explain why Alzheimer is happening at an older age. However, we know that something really important is happening during deep sleep and that is clearance (Xie et al 2013; Kress et al 2014). Backed up by the findings of Romanella et al. 2021 who found that there was a correlation between the accumulation of Alzheimer´s Disease and the amount of slow-wave sleep. So in short: Aging --> less growth hormone --> less deep sleep --> less clearance --> more accumulation of amyloid beta and therefore more Alzheimer. However if this was true the only thing that we need to do is to give Growth Hormone to patients and their sleep pattern would change. An important part is that Cortisol has an inhibiting effect on Growth Hormone. Since Aging --> more Cortisol, means that to cure Alzheimer we should give people more Growth Hormone and at the same time at the start of the sleep cycle, should reduce the levels of Cortisol in the body. However, this last part is never tested. There is no research on the effects of stimulating Growth hormone and reducing cortisol levels in accordance with reducing Alzheimer's disease. But if you look to a healthy lifestyle is exercising perfect since it reduces stress and increases growth hormone levels that's why its effect is so powerful in all the studies. Hopefully I could make it a little bit clear. Untill now nor Peter nor Matt reacted to my e-mails. PS: sorry for my bad english ;).

@@judokoning very interesting! Thanks a lot for the info and references. Also, your English is better than most native speakers so no worries there.

through spinal fluid I believe

That's an excellent question

Sleep rings (like Oura) detail which kinds of sleep you get and how much of each. My goal is to get the most deep sleep I can. Last night I drank wine before bed and got exactly 1 minute of deep sleep. I knew it would be a risk but I didn't realize it would be that bad.

Trump came in first (in this instance).

@@reedaltman ^ leftist in denial right there