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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Is there a link between poor sleep and Alzheimer's disease?
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2016-01-13 00:00:00
	Description:		Poor sleep – specifically the deep slumber needed to restore memories – has been linked to a toxic build-up of beta-amyloid, the protein believed to trigger Alzheimer’s disease. Neuroscientist Bryce Mander, who co-led this University of California, Berkeley study, explains. "So sleep actually not only helps preserve memory, but it actually also helps remove toxins from the brain and one of those toxins happens to be beta amyloid. We don’t think that this is the only reason that those toxins are associated with Alzheimer’s relating to memory impairment; we just think this is a new mechanism by which those toxins affect memory and an important one because we can actually do something about it potentially, which is get more sleep or use devices to enhance sleep or basically promote exercise in older people who are at risk for Alzheimer’s so that they get deeper sleep because exercise promotes more deep sleep." The team has received a major National Institutes of Health grant to further test their hypothesis that sleep is an early warning sign or biomarker of Alzheimer’s.
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