The brain may clean out Alzheimer’s plaques during sleep | Hacker News Reader

The brain may clean out Alzheimer’s plaques during sleep

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163 pointsmmazzarolo51 comments

So, if Bill Gates gets his early detection method soon, people can start to get some Ambien induced extra sleep and monitor their progress.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/A-better-way-of-diagnosing...

why Ambien induced?

Why is this downvoted?

Or you can just study more and produce more neurons.

What?

I think you may be confusing synapses and neurons.

Before downvoting me, please google your shit. Ok, I used the wrong term here, I meant synapses. If you engage regularly in mental stimulating activities, you increase the number of synapses and thus halting or postponing the development of Alzheimer disease. Google for Nun study.

The best way to improve sleep is CBTI, definitely not Ambien. Ambien doesn’t induce sleep. It induces a non waking state.

Maybe not quite Ambien, but have you ever had propofol sedation?

Best nap of my life.

Do you have a cite for that? Ambien makes me slightly more drowsy; it's not like being under general anesthesia.

"According to the new book Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker, the director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, the sleep people get on sleeping pills like Ambien is not true sleep. Drugs like these simply “switch off the top of your cortex, the top of your brain,” he explained to New York Magazine, “and put you into a state of unconsciousness.” That’s not sleep; that’s cryogenics. According to Walker, sleeping-pill sleep doesn’t have the same restorative powers—and there are lots, from an immune boost to emotional resilience—as good, old-fashioned zzzzs."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/10/better-th...

Does that apply to Melatonin pills? It seems like a more "normal" way to get your brain to sleep than Ambien.

No, melatonin is the actual thing your body produces to go to sleep.

However, having used it, if your brain chemistry is sufficiently screwed up, you may find it hard to wake up fully if you don't also take Co q 10 in the morning. That's the coenzyme for melatonin. It wakes you up.

Brain chemistry stuff was disproved ages ago. There is no such thing as chemical imbalance.

A. I took enough (prescription) drugs for enough years that it isn't possible I got through that without deranging my brain in some manner. In fact, I think different, I dream different etc. I'm absolutely positive my brain was permanently altered by the experience.

B. After all those drugs, I was incapable of sleeping well. In a nutshell, I fixed this with several years of Co q 10 in the morning, melatonin at night. I sleep pretty well most nights these days.

C. Every time someone tells me I imagined the whole thing and it is placebo effect, my sons have a good chuckle about how that must make me the most powerful psychic on the planet that I apparently cured myself solely with the power of some idiotic, unscientific belief. (Darth Vader, fear me!)

I don't see why anyone should doubt your observations about the quality of your sleep over time. You've surely paid closer attention than they have, what with it being your sleep. Causality is harder to prove though. Was it really long-term conditioning through melatonin and Coq10? I moved to a new apartment recently and my sleep improved. I thought it might be because of a brand new, very clean aircon. Then my sleep got worse again with nothing else obvious changing. Who knows what confounding variables may exist. Stress, diet, season, etc.

As for the theory of placebo effect (where a placebo actually has some type of therapeutic impact), I don't think we've really concluded whether it exists or not -- I'm not a doctor but my understanding is that there is evidence in both directions and the debate is ongoing.

I did a lot of other things too. That wasn't all I did.

But I was able to successfully alter my circadian rhythm on short notice when I worked the night shift and had to occasionally show up for the day shift by using Co q 10 in the morning and melatonin at night and making no other changes. So I'm absolutely certain this combo can move the needle on the circadian rhythm in specific.

Are you saying that there are no hormones that affect brain function? Or that all people's bodies are always perfect at regulating those hormones? Either way, that is a completely crazy thing to suggest.

I am saying that brain is not a bucket full of chemicals that need to have right balance.

Disproven is a strong word, trying to type on a cellphone with your elbow is a more apt description, not to mention blaming everything on "chemistry imbalance"

But yeah, Melatonin do induce sleep (if it's a good sleep is probably debatable, and it's definitely not my first choice)

You are likely taking more than the appropriate 0.3mg dose and too late in the evening, if it's giving you a hangover.

No, I was taking less than the recommended dose. My brain was just borked.

Is that a reality-based statement, based on some sort of data? If so, please share.

Since I can remember, I've had episodes of pretty gnarly insomnia, and have sought all manner of medical and other help, from mainstream to fairly ridiculous ones done out of desperation. I tried cardio, weight-lifting, slow-walking 5 miles a day; I quit drinking, quit smoking, tried drinking more, stopped caffeine, tried meditating, sex every day, minimal sex, vegan diet, paleo meat diet, calorie-restricted diet, melatonin in various dosages, all-lights-off-at-dusk, blue/fullspectrum light therapy, read only books for entertainment, play 4 hours of video games every day, ice baths in the morning, and lots of other last-ditch n-1 experiments.

Ambien is the only thing that helped. I'm pretty leery of it, what with all the stories about people having sex with strangers in the park and not remembering. Also, I really really don't want to develop any new dependencies that make it even harder to sleep naturally.

However, if I have 2-3 consecutive nights where I can't sleep more than 2-3 hours, I take an Ambien and then I sleep through the night. And the next day I feel like I slept through the night. That happens maybe on average once a month (but the cadence is more like 2-3 months no problem, then several bouts of insomnia in a month).

So while I still have the insomnia problem like I always have (43% through my projected 100-year life span), the Ambien makes it manageable.

Something else to consider - what if the reason these plaques are unable to be cleaned out in some is the result of a life (decades)-long “deep” sleep deprivation (i.e, still getting sleep but not a good amount of regular, deep sleep where this cleaning process would normally occur), and the reason for this chronic sleep deprivation was some genetic pre-disposition, such as bruxism, which would cause little to no “deep sleep,” or perhaps brought on form of chronic dehydration due to a genetic predisposition for diabetes / sugary drinks / blood sugar imbalance, causing brain fogginess rather than deep sleep during a period of involuntary fasting, or a myriad of other unnoticeable deep- sleep-depriving illnesses?

I am not suggesting I have any answers; only questions and curiosities for the puzzling subject.

You're just considering "involuntary" lack of sleep, when there seems to be a serious epidemic of voluntary sleeplessness as indicated by frequent boasting about how little sleep one can get by on.

Both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher boasted of how little they needed to sleep. But two data points but highly salient ones.

Donald Trump too.

Yeah but he's probably making it up.

I like to boast about how much sleep I need to get! I can't function on less than 10 hours of sleep a night.

Chronic insomnia is still extremely poorly understood, unfortunately, and as other commentators have mentioned in this thread sleep medications are a short term bandage that come with their own harmful side-effects.

As someone who's a chronic insomniac and has been my entire life since I was a baby, I've tried almost everything to sleep with no success. At this point I'm still in my 20s and young, but I worry about having memory and health issues as I age. For now I'm just trying to stay healthy despite it and make a habit of documentation in case my memory does become compromised.

This was discussed in a Joe Rogan podcast w/ a sleep expert:

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker

I learned a lot, and it changed my sleep behaviors.

His Google talk is also very interesting, a lot of other effects besides Alzheimer's are related to sleep deprivation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXflBZXAucQ

I've almost completely switched to decaf coffee (which still has 15-30% the amount of caffeine normally found in regular coffee) after reading "Why Do We Sleep" by Matthew Walker.

And half of the office here is either reading it now or wants to start reading it

The American standard for decaf coffee is to remove 97% of caffeine content[0]. (Note - I couldn't find specific CFRs on an official government site, so it's possible this is just a recommendation and not actually enforced. However, a quick google will confirm that this is the consensus on how things are supposed to operate - I make no comment on how they actually operate.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Caffeine_conten...

If you drink Swiss Water decaf, it's 99.9% caffeine free.

This isn't actually a particularly new idea- Barbara Oakley's Coursera course ("Learning How to Learn") actually cites another researcher (name forgotten) in the same field working with similar sets of theoretical assumptions.

"poor sleep causes ..." or does it?

"... causes poor sleep" or does it?

Which one is it? Neither yet both?

Come on folks, we learned this in 3rd grade. The real answer is "it's complicated".

It’s likely that both are true. It’s likely to be a bi-directional relationship.

The scientist that developed treatment for narcolepsy (GHB supposedly normalizes sleep), he is currently investigating GHB in dementia patients: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16837107

Or, those that know how to manage their time and get enough sleep are those with healthy brains.

Causality? No, just jumping to conclusions like this article.

That explains the relation between Alzheimer and sleeping disorders.

No it doesnt. Read the article...causality is still unvlear.

Let's walk through this: People who are insomniacs are more likely to get less sleep. Could this same group also more likely to take anticholinergic sleep drugs (diphenhydramine)? There is a good link starting to be established between those drugs and dementias of all types. See https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar..., or a bloggy summary if you're so inclined: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-d...

The link is alarming enough you should think seriously before taking things like Zzzquil, Benadryl, Tylenol PM, etc. if you value your mental faculties.. But maybe the correlation in this article is at least partially explained by this other link. Personally the other theories (brain garbage collection during sleep, etc.) also make a lot of sense. And don't forget about the fungal theory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24614898

I don't have much to add, but I know some of these drugs (ie DPH) are serious deliriants at high doses. It causing a loss of mental faculties with long term use would not surprise me.

Diphenhydramine is an anti-hystimine, that happens to make you drowsy (it's also a mild anti-depresent, which lead to somr targetted anti-depresents).

I guess it's a complex organic molecule with multiple interactions

True. But it's also well known that Alzheimer's increases the buildup of amyloid-beta, which latches into hippocampus (memory) and thalamus (which controls sleep). With lack of sleep, your brain is unable to get rid of the excess of amyloid-beta.

It's unknown if lack of sleep causes the onset of Alzheimer's, but the opposite is likely true: Alzheimer's patients don't sleep well. So once it starts to develop, it spirals down likely because of sleep deficiency, thus accelerating memory loss.

Source: "Why We Sleep", by Matthew Walker. We had a few threads recently about the book here [1], [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17381235

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446932

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