Does Treating Sleep Apnea Prevent Dementia?

We have known for a long time that those who suffer from sleep apnea are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

But what hasn’t been clear is if it’s actually the sleep apnea that directly causes dementia or whether treating it would help prevent dementia.

A new study published in the journal Sleep now sheds light on this issue. And the results may really surprise you.

Positive airway pressure (PAP) is the most common treatment for sleep apnea. This can come in forms like continuous positive airway pressure, bilevel airway pressure, average volume assured pressure support, and a variety of other means. What they all have in common is that they force air down your throat and thereby prevent your upper airway from collapsing, as it does if you have sleep apnea.

The authors of this study, led by Michigan Medicine’s Sleep Disorders Centers, obtained and analyzed the Medicare claims of 53,321 Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and older who had been diagnosed with sleep apnea before 2011.

They also used these claims records to identify which patients had been prescribed PAP equipment as a treatment for their condition.

Finally, they consulted these records to see which of these sleep apnea patients had been diagnosed with a dementia-related condition between 2011 and 2013.

In their sample, 90% were non-Hispanic whites, 62% were younger than 75 years, and 59% were men. The majority (78%) had been prescribed PAP treatment, and 74% used it frequently.

When the researchers checked which of their subjects developed dementia-related conditions during the three years of observation, they discovered that the sleep apnea treatment definitely helped.

1. PAP treatment reduced Alzheimer’s disease risk by 22%.
2. PAP treatment reduced dementia risk by 31%.
3. PAP treatment reduced the risk of mild cognitive impairment by 18%.
4. Those who adhered properly to the PAP treatment cut their Alzheimer’s disease risk by 35%.

This shows how important oxygen and sleep are to healthy cognitive aging. It also means that you can significantly reduce your risk of receiving a dementia-related diagnosis by adhering to your sleep apnea treatment.

Interestingly, for years I’ve been teaching people simple techniques that increase oxygen levels in the brain, which fights off Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. This is just another study that proves the effectiveness of these simple techniques explained here…

But if you snore or suffer from sleep apnea, then you want to first of all learn the easy throat exercises explained here. They open up the breathing passages so you won’t snore or have those horrible apnea episodes anymore…