A new, large-scale study establishes a direct link between unhealthy sleep habits and a brain that appears biologically older than its chronological age. Researchers scored sleep health based on five factors (sleep duration, insomnia, snoring, etc.), finding that poor sleepers had brains that appeared, on average, a full year older. The study identified systemic inflammation as a primary culprit, explaining over 10 percent of the link, as poor sleep appears to fuel body-wide inflammation that damages brain tissue. Beyond inflammation, poor sleep also disrupts the brain’s waste-clearance system (the glymphatic system) and harms cardiovascular health, creating a “perfect storm” for cognitive decline. The findings…

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