Alzheimer's Disease Prevention: How Sleeping on Your Side Can Reduce Risk

Alzheimer's Disease is a kind of progressive disorder that produces memory loss and inability to carry a normal conversation or response to the environment. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that as high as five million Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2013. By 2050, it is expected to increase to about 14 million, something most experts worry about. Fortunately, a group of researchers has been able to discover a simple way of reducing risk of the disease, and that is by keeping yourself in a side-way position when you sleep.

Times of India reports that according to a research done in the Stony Brook University and University of Rochester both in New York, an MRI of anesthetized rodents has shown clues about how sleeping positions, specifically when they are on their sides, may impact the health and well-being of an individual.

The researchers have been particularly keen on the "gympathic pathway," the moving of used fluid from the brain to waste products which works perfectly when sleeping on the sides than when the individual is lying on their stomachs or backs. This may help reduce Alzheimer's through the cleaning of protein buildup in the brain.

One of the authors of the study, Helene Benveniste of Stony Brook University, said their findings can conclude how the lateral sleeping position is most helpful in making the glympathic pathway transport most efficient. Furthermore, Maiken Nedergaard of University of Rochester added that sleeping on the sides has been practiced even by animals, and this study has just supported the concept of how to effectively clean the brain.

Although there is no evidence that the effects hold true among humans, Bustle writes that as other researches have discovered that snoring can cause Alzheimer's Disease as it can disrupt the oxygen flow to the brain, then the theory can be used similarly in humans as most sleeping disorder experts recommend sleeping on the side to reduce snoring. Furthermore, there are no known side effects to sleeping in a lateral position.

Lastly, the researchers propose to that through their discovery, it is best to use body posture and quality of sleep when assessing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to interstitial fluid (ISF) transport and how brain proteins may contribute in the damaging of the brains, iFree Press reports. The glympathic pathway has discovered that what affects the brain the most is the amyloid beta and tau proteins.

The research has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience last Tuesday.