Sleep is crucial to health, among other things, because the brain takes the opportunity to clear away toxic residual products.
But a new study shows that sleeping pills can impair that cleaning process.
– Chronically impaired cleaning can cause waste collection, which can ultimately increase the risk of illness, writes Natalie Hauglund, the researcher behind the study, to TV4 News.
One third of life is spent in sleep – a time when the brain cleans away harmful residual products and protects from dementia such as Alzheimer’s.
But according to a new study in the magazine Cell, sleeping pills can interfere with the important cleaning process that takes place at night. According to Natalie Hauglund, a researcher at the University of Oxford and Copenhagen and one of the authors behind the study, this is because the cerebrospinal fluid is slowed down in the brain of sleeping drugs.
“We saw a decrease of 30 percent of the brain’s cleaning flow after taking the sleep tablet Zolpidem,” she writes in an email to TV4 News.
“The brain does not clean up as effectively”
In the study, the researchers have investigated how the cerebrospinal fluid and the brain’s blood flow are affected when mice are allowed to sleep naturally and with the help of sleeping pills.
Cerebrospinal fluid is important, among other things, to remove slag products from the brain, and the result indicates that this process decreases when consuming sleeping. The researchers believe that the slow, rhythmic activity that occurs in deep sleep is crucial to the cleaning function, and that sleeping pills can interfere with these rhythms.
“The consequences may be that the brain is not cleared as effectively. This is probably not a problem after only a few nights, but chronically impaired cleaning can cause waste accumulation, which can ultimately increase the risk of illness. “
More studies are needed
The researchers emphasize that more and larger studies are required to determine how sleep aids affect the brain’s cleaning in humans, but still the findings are considered to be early evidence.
“Sleep is still crucial to maintaining many of the body’s functions. If the alternative is not to get any sleep at all, I would say that sleep drugs are still the best option, ”writes Natalie Hauglund.
According to the national public health survey in 2024, 45 percent of adult Swedes stated that they have sleep problems and more than 800,000 Swedes may be prescribed sleeping pills.