Know the reason for the elderly not getting good sleep. Scientists have found out why the sleep of the elderly repeatedly opens at night. For this, American researchers did an interesting experiment on rats.
It is a well-known fact that with age, the quality of sleep deteriorates and it becomes difficult to get good sleep. But why this happens, this mystery has remained unsolved till now. Now some scientists of America have solved some tangled threads of this mystery.
American scientists have discovered how a circuit in the brain that controls sleep depth and wakefulness weakens over time. Researchers hope that this discovery will help in making better medicines.
Professor Louise de Lecia of Stanford University, co-author of the research, told AFP news agency: “More than half of people over the age of 65 complain that they do not sleep well.” Research says that poor sleep is related to many other aspects of health. These range from hypertension to heart attack, diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s.
How did the research happen?
The medicines which are given in case of sleeplessness are kept in the category of hypnotics. These include Ambien. But with age, the effect of these drugs also decreases.
For the new research, de Lecia and his colleagues studied brain chemicals called hypocretins. These chemicals are produced by neurons present in the area between the eyes and the ears. Of the billions of neurons in the brain, only 50,000 produce hypocretins.
Can a person live without sleeping
In 1998 de Lescia and other scientists discovered that hypocretin emits the signals that keep humans awake. Since sleep deprivation is experienced in many species with aging, the same process is believed to work in mammals as in other species. Hypocretins have already been researched in humans, dogs and rats.
experiments on rats
The researchers made two groups of rats aged three to five months and 18 to 22 months old. He used light through the fiber to stimulate certain neurons in the brain. The results of this research were recorded by imaging technology.
The scientists found that older mice lost 38 percent more hypocretins than younger mice. They also found that the hypocretins that were left in the elderly rats were more easily stimulated, which increased the chances of the creatures being awake.
De Lecia says that this may be due to the loss of potassium channels over time, which act as switches inside the body for the functioning of many types of cells. “The neurons are more likely to be more active. They are the ones that make you more likely to be awake,” he says.
elderly not getting good sleep: sleep disturbance
Scientists hope that this information will prove helpful in making better sleep medicines. Commenting on this research, Laura Jacobson and Daniel Hoyer of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Australia, write that the benefit of specific detection rather than sleep disturbance could be in the development of better drugs.
VK/AA (AFP)
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