How Your Sleep Position Changes Dementia Risk

This is not just about sleep duration or even about sleep quality… It really is about which way your body is positioned.

Goodnight, glymphatic system

The association between sleeping position and dementia risk is about glymphatic drainage, which is largely powered by gravity (and thus dependent on which way around your head and neck are oriented), and very important for clearing toxins out of the brain—including beta-amyloid proteins.

This becomes particularly important when the glymphatic system becomes less efficient in midlife, often 15–20 years before cognitive decline symptoms appear.

The video’s thumbnail headline, “SCIENTISTS REVEAL: THE WAY YOUR SLEEP CAN CAUSE DEMENTIA” is overstated and inaccurate, but our adjusted headline “how your sleep position changes dementia risk” is actually representative of the paper on which this video was based; we’ll quote from the paper itself here:

❝This paper concludes that 1. glymphatic clearance plays a major role in Alzheimer’s pathology; 2. the vast majority of waste clearance occurs during sleep; 3. dementias are associated with sleep disruption, alongside an age-related decline in AQP4 polarization; and 4. lifestyle choices such as sleep position, alcohol intake, exercise, omega-3 consumption, intermittent fasting and chronic stress all modulate* glymphatic clearance. Lifestyle choices could therefore alter Alzheimer’s disease risk through improved glymphatic clearance, and could be used as a preventative lifestyle intervention for both healthy brain ageing and Alzheimer’s disease.❞

…and specifically, they found:

❝Glymphatic transport is most efficient in the right lateral sleeping position, with more CSF clearance occurring compared to supine and prone. The average person changes sleeping position 11 times per night, but there was no difference in the number of position changes between neurodegenerative and control groups, making the percentage of time spent in supine position the risk factor, not the number of position changes❞

Read the paper in full here: The Sleeping Brain: Harnessing the Power of the Glymphatic System through Lifestyle Choices

*saying “modulate” here is not as useful as it could be, because they modulate it differently: side-sleeping improves clearance; back sleeping decreases it; front-sleeping isn’t great either. Alcohol intake reduces clearance, exercise (especially cardiovascular exercise) improves it; omega-3 consumption improves it up a degree and does depend on omega-3/6 ratios, intermittent fasting improves it, and chronic stress worsens it.

And for a more pop-science presentation, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)

Take care!