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Sleep is undoubtedly one of the most important components when it comes to achieving our optimal health.
Sleep is how our bodies reset. It restores and repairs our organs. And notably, it protects the health of our brains and ensures healthy cognitive functioning.
Many of struggle to get enough sleep. Work, stress, and other life demands often mean we fall short of those seven or eight glorious hours that we need to recharge our bodies and minds.
But what if it wasn’t the quantity of sleep that mattered most, but rather the quality of our sleep?
A new study has found that this may be the case when it comes to sleep. In short, instances of deep sleep were found to matter more than the amount of sleep.
In the study, over 100 participants were followed for six nights. What they found was that those with fewer experiences of deep sleep, as shown by their brain waves, produced higher amounts of a particular brain protein, called tau.
Why does tau matter? Higher amounts of tau in the central nervous system have been consistently linked with memory disorders, specially Alzheimer’s.
Breaking these findings down further, it’s very possible that achieving deep sleep matters far more than reaching a specific number of hours of sleep per night, particularly when it comes to preserving the long-term health of our brains.
So the next time you find yourself falling short of the desired seven or eight hour mark, don’t stress. Instead, focus on your sleep quality, and achieving deeper sleep. It very well may be that quality matters more than quantity.
Related: 10 Tips for a More Restful, Refreshing Sleep
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