I know this may be hard to hear, but if you aren’t sleeping well, you have a higher risk of developing dementia. I’m not saying this to scare you. The good news is that some of the same imbalances that are affecting your sleep are also increasing your chances of dementia. 


This is good news because when you correct the imbalances, you can sleep 7+ hours a night and reduce your risk of developing this scary disease. In this episode, I’m going to explain what those imbalances are and how to fix them. 


You’ll learn:

  • how lack of sleep can lead to dementia, Alzheimer’s and memory loss
  • 4 root causes of both sleep problems and dementia
  • How sleep meds increase the risk of dementia
  • How to reduce your chances of dementia even if it runs in your family


If you want to find out more about why you can’t sleep and how to fix it, you want to sign up for my exclusive smart sleeper sunday email series.


Schedule a consultation to get started with the Complete Sleep Solution program so you can consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently.


Resources mentioned in this episode:

Episode 98: How to stabilize your blood sugar to sleep better quickly


00:00 Understanding the Dementia Epidemic

00:49 The Sleep-Dementia Connection

00:54 Meet Your Host: Martha Lewis

01:24 How Lack of Sleep Leads to Dementia

03:09 The Role of Amyloid Proteins

05:59 Blood Sugar and Sleep

07:28 Stress and Sleep

08:51 Hormones and Sleep

09:31 Heavy Metals and Sleep

10:32 The Problem with Sleeping Pills

11:17 Finding the Root Causes of Sleep Issues

11:51 Join the Smart Sleeper Sunday Email Series

12:33 Conclusion and Next Steps


Episode Transcript


Dementia and Alzheimer's are an epidemic. Over 55 million people have this right now and it's expected to double every 20 years moving forward. I know this may be hard to hear, but if you aren't sleeping well, you have a higher risk of developing dementia. Some of my clients come to me because they aren't sleeping well, and one of their parents has dementia, and they know that fixing their sleep issues will help prevent it.


Now, I'm not saying any of this to scare you. The good news is that some of the same imbalances that are affecting your sleep are also increasing your chances of dementia. Now, this is good news because when you correct the imbalances, you can sleep seven or more hours a night and reduce your risk of developing this scary disease.


In this episode, I'm going to explain what those imbalances are and how to fix them. I'm Martha Lewis. As a functional health coach for the past five years, I've helped over 200 clients. Find and fix everything that's causing their sleep issues by using my detective skills and finding all the clues that affect each person's sleep.


You're listening to the Sleep Detective Podcast, where you will finally understand why you can't sleep and how to fix it so you can consistently sleep 7 plus hours uninterrupted without drugs. In this episode, we're going to talk about how lack of sleep leads to dementia, Alzheimer's, and memory loss.


Four root causes of both sleep problems and dementia, how sleep meds and other drugs increase the risk of dementia, and how to reduce your chances of dementia, even if it runs in your family. That's the goal, right? Let's prevent this from happening in the first place. Now, maybe you're familiar with Dr. Matthew Walker.


He's author of the bestselling book, Why We Sleep. And he is a prominent sleep researcher at UC Berkeley. And he wrote in his book, I've always found it curious that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, two heads of state, that were very vocal, if not proud, about sleeping only four to five hours a night.


Both went on to develop the ruthless disease and he adds, the current U. S. President Donald Trump also a vociferous proclaimer of sleeping just a few hours each night might want to take note. This is so true. I think that a lot of people have moved past this bragging about not getting enough sleep, but some prominent politicians even are still talking about it.


Now, I have a friend named Annie Finn, who's a physician, a chef, and she's founded Brain Health Kitchen that helps spread awareness about preventing Alzheimer's, mainly through diet and cooking. So she says that researchers have been tracking the link between inadequate sleep and Alzheimer's for decades.


The less good quality sleep one gets throughout life, the greater their risk. The reasons are complex, but it may be that lack of sleep keeps amyloid protein, a key pathological finding in Alzheimer's, from being cleared from the brain. Now, it's mainly during deep sleep, or what's also called non REM sleep.


So not the dream state of sleep, it's deep sleep, when these amyloid plaques are cleared from the brain. And one study showed that they found increased amyloids with every hour of sleep lost. And Dr. Matthew Walker wrote extensively about this, and he found sleep and dementia to be a two way connection.


So the more amyloid, the less deep sleep. The less deep sleep, the more amyloid, and so on. And so it can be this vicious cycle that it's easy to get stuck in. He did note also that trouble sleeping tends to come before the onset of dementia by a few years. It's almost a warning sign that this is something that you could be heading toward.


Now the hippocampus is a part of the brain that converts short term memories into long term memories. And so when that degenerates, that is what leads to dementia. And it's interesting because the hippocampus is also the part of the brain that regulates our circadian rhythm or our sleep wake cycle. So it makes sense that if Um, if our memory is being, you know, disturbed, then so is our sleep because they're both in the same parts of the brain.


And what's also interesting for this connection is that many of my clients with sleep issues always also complain about memory loss. So we know it's from lack of sleep, but this is why that is happening. And this isn't surprising since we need sleep to consolidate our memories. It's really interesting that it's during deep sleep.


That's when your brain stores information that you learn during the day. So without enough sleep, your short term memory diminishes. As I'm sure you've experienced, right? Where are my keys? It's during REM sleep or that dream state that our brain catalogs that information and the same information that we consolidated in deep sleep is then kind of cataloged and put into the right places during REM sleep.


And so, It makes those connections in really creative ways. So that's why there's evidence that a lack of REM sleep can reduce your creativity, problem solving, and ability to learn new skills. It's also interesting and good news that some of the causes of sleep issues, memory loss, and Alzheimer's are the same.


So that's how we can address all of these things at the same time. Now, the number one factor is actually blood sugar or being on the blood sugar roller coaster. Sugar and insulin surges, which is insulin is what your body releases when blood sugar gets too high. Those cause inflammation in the brain.


And this is why Alzheimer's is now being called type three diabetes because high insulin also reduces the brain's ability to clear out those amyloid plaques. Now, blood sugar irregularities can also lead to sleep disturbances, and I've talked about this before, so you can find out more about blood sugar in depth in episode 98, but what happens is when your blood sugar drops too low in the night, that's stressful for your body, and your body is going to release cortisol to give your body energy.


It puts glucose into your cells and raises your blood sugar, but. That's going to also wake you up when your body releases cortisol at night. So, it's interesting because blood sugar is one of the things I assess for as soon as my clients sign up for any of my programs. And, you know, my clients who get a continuous glucose monitor, we will see this dip in blood sugar happening at the same time that they are reporting waking up.


And so we can see this direct effect that that has when blood sugar drops too low at night. Now, the second factor that affects both sleep and dementia is stress. Now, I'm sure you know that stress affects sleep. It also increases your risk of dementia. And that's because when cortisol levels are high from constantly being stressed, when you're constantly in fight or flight, What that does is it takes oxygen away from the brain, and cortisol also over activates the hippocampus, that part of your brain that we talked about, which can alter your circadian rhythm.


So recent studies are showing that a disrupted circadian rhythm, which can mean feeling tired during the day and wired at night, when we're supposed to be the opposite is actually an indicator for an increased risk of dementia. So this is something that I test for. I test for cortisol and your cortisol pattern with the Dutch test that I use in my programs.


And in my programs, my goal is to lower all kinds of stress. So when we think of stress, we think of mental stress, but there are also physical stressors in your body that make your body release cortisol, like we just talked about with blood sugar. So my goal is to find all the sources of stress in both your body and your mind and lower that so that your overall cortisol lowers.


Now, the third imbalance that is linked to both sleep issues and dementia has to do with our sex hormones. So low estrogen and testosterone can become depleted over time when your body's constantly using its resources to make cortisol to deal with stress. And low levels of these sex hormones can affect sleep as well as memory and focus.


And this is being shown by various studies. So the Dutch test that looks at cortisol also looks at your sex hormone. So It's looking at multiple pieces of the puzzle that can lead to sleep issues. Now, the fourth risk factor are heavy metals. So these are mercury, aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, et cetera. These accumulate in the liver and the brain, and they can cause all sorts of neurological issues, including sleep problems and memory loss.


And so there was. Another meta analysis, which is looking at multiple studies of heavy metal exposure that found specifically that aluminum, mercury, cadmium, and lead, that there's a significant relationship between elevated blood levels of these metals and risk of Alzheimer's. So heavy metals are something else I test for in my program using a hair tissue mineral analysis test because they can affect sleep as well.


So if you have high mercury, high aluminum, high copper, any of these heavy metals, it can affect your sleep and lead to neurological and mood issues. Now, unfortunately, sleeping pills are not the answer for better sleep. Even though they might help you get more quote unquote sleep, it's artificial sleep.


Because again, studies show that zolpidem, which is Ambien and benzodiazepines make you more likely to suffer from dementia and even over the counter sleep aids like Benadryl or the drug Seroquil can increase your risk of dementia because they suppress what's called acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter in the brain.


Now, sleep deprivation is not the only risk factor for dementia, but an important way to help prevent this is to get consistently good sleep. And if you can't sleep, there's something going on in your body that's causing this. So some of the things I talked about today, like blood sugar, like hormones, like cortisol, like heavy metals, but there are other possibilities as well.


So if you aren't sleeping, something's out of balance in your body, even if you eat healthy, even if you exercise, even if you take supplements, even if you're, focused on your health and longevity, something is out of whack if you can't sleep normally, it's just a sign that your body's out of balance.


So if you want to find out more about why you can't sleep and how to fix it. You want to sign up for my exclusive Smart Sleeper Sunday email series. When you sign up, you'll immediately receive your first email where you'll learn about what really causes sleep issues. Cause like I said, blood sugar and heavy metals are only a couple of the possibilities and you'll know exactly how to find and fix the root causes of your sleep issues so you can sleep well without drugs.


And then you'll get regular life changing emails about how to sleep well so you don't have to live with sleep problems any longer. So you can sign up for this series at the link in my show notes or on my website, the sleep detective. com. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for listening and I will talk to you next time.

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