As people reach a certain age, they may experience increased forgetfulness, leading to concerns like, “Could this be dementia?”

While a sudden and severe increase in forgetfulness can indeed be a sign of dementia, there’s another possible cause besides illness:

Sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation significantly impacts memory.

Memory is controlled by the hippocampus, a part of the brain.
New memories are stored and organized in the hippocampus before being consolidated in the cerebral cortex.
Study time is known to shrink the hippocampus, reducing memory capacity and the ability to organize memories.
This decline in memory leads to forgetfulness.

Even when studying for tests, getting enough sleep is generally more effective than staying up late studying.

Furthermore, sleep deprivation has another drawback.

The substance that causes Alzheimer’s disease is amyloid-beta.
Amyloid-beta is eliminated from the brain during sleep and detoxified by the liver, but insufficient sleep reduces the amount of amyloid-beta eliminated from the brain.

Therefore, sleep deprivation leads to the accumulation of more amyloid-beta in the brain, increasing the risk of accelerating the onset of dementia.

Please make sure to get enough sleep.