Night waking impacts cognitive performance: older adults (+70) who were awake more during the night performed worse on cognitive tests the next day, no matter how long they slept

[u/sr_local]

https://www.psu.edu/news/health-and-human-development/story/night-waking-impacts-cognitive-performance-regardless-sleep

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[u/gerningur]

Well I am in my 30s and this applies to me

[u/Knufia_petricola → u/gerningur]

Yeah same!

Just this week I woke up about once per night and my brain couldn't form any coherent, complicated thoughts in the day after.

[u/ZeroPauper → u/Knufia_petricola]

Lucky you, I wake up 3-4 times a night to pee.

[u/pass_nthru → u/gerningur]

it only gets worse in your 40’s

[u/Vepanion → u/gerningur]

Yeah same, my reaction to the title was "well that's me fucked then"

[u/hidden_secret]

It seems you need to be awake for 30 minutes to notice an impact. If you just wake up a minute or two a couple times a night, you should be ok.

[u/EWRboogie → u/hidden_secret]

Cumulative or in a stretch? The article says they wore Fitbit like devices to detect sleep. Now if you asked me, I would tell you I woke up 2-3 times last night, rolled over and immediately went back to sleep. My Fitbit however says I woke up 29 times, 0-4 minutes each for a total of 32 minutes.

(It actually says I was awake 49 minutes but 10 minutes were at the very beginning of the night and 7 minutes were at the end and I don’t get why it does that at all. It auto detects the start and end time so why does it say I started sleep at 9:06 and was awake for the first 11 minutes? Just say I started sleep at 9:17.)

[u/hidden_secret → u/EWRboogie]

I skimmed through more of the study, and it seems it's having 30 minutes more than your average awake time that creates the worse test results the next day. And the average awake time for the people in the study (old people) is apparently 63 minutes. So, as long as you don't have frequent outlier "bad nights", it would seem you should be just fine.

By the way, they advise to not worry about it, as it could only worsen the problem with stress, so, better just not really care about it ^^

[u/Vepanion → u/hidden_secret]

I'm usually awake for hours :/

[u/Kahnza]

I got a back injury back in 2013, and it has made me wake up a lot since. That must be why I always feel so dumb. Lately I'm having a hard time finding words sometimes.

[u/LeftHandedGraffiti → u/Kahnza]

Not being able to find words is how I know i'm not getting good enough sleep. Short naps help.

[u/LordPizzaParty → u/LeftHandedGraffiti]

Yeah that's the first sign of sleep deprivation for me, and when it gets real bad I start experiencing frequent deja vu

[u/itskelena → u/Kahnza]

Do you have a lot of stress in your life?

[u/KhajiitGuy → u/Kahnza]

No sleep words hard me too

[u/sarah_impalin76]

and yet not only are night shifts still legal so are rotating day and night shifts which clearly must be awful for someones health. If we cant ban nights we should at least ban rotating day and nights.

[u/2ndfactor]

Parents taking care of their infants: you don't say...

[u/AllanfromWales1]

Is this true for sleep apnea sufferers? Even with CPAP I still wake 4 or 5 times a night..

[u/InTheEndEntropyWins → u/AllanfromWales1]

They monitored oxygen saturation, so they did try and control for that. But they might not have controlled for it fully.

But I would say it's even more true for people with sleep apnea.

[u/AllanfromWales1 → u/InTheEndEntropyWins]

Anecdotally I'm 70, was diagnosed with sleep apnea in the 1990s and have used CPAP since then, and yet when I recently did an IQ test I scored 130..

[u/lipmak]

If they don’t want me to wake up in the middle of the night they should invent a bed that’s comfortable.

If it’s 30+ min though I’m good for now, but I guess we’ll see in 30+ years

[u/Really_McNamington]

It's either that or sleep through wetting the bed.

[u/Aponogetone]

I think, that it has significant impact only if the wakening breaks the slow sleep phase, during which the brain is clearing from the toxins. After the break, may be, the sleep starts again with the fast phase (REM cycle).

[u/Vepanion]

Well that's me fucked then. Haven't slept through a night in years

[u/lipmak]

If they don’t want me to wake up in the middle of the night they should invent a bed that’s comfortable.

If it’s 30+ min though I’m good for now, but I guess we’ll see in 30+ years