Sleepless Nights Could Be Fast-Forwarding Your Brain’s Age

Restless nights may do more than make you tired, new research shows they could also speed up brain aging.

A study of more than 27,000 middle-aged and older UK adults found that poor sleep habits were linked to brains that appeared older than their actual age. Those with the worst sleep showed brains about a year older on average, while people with moderately poor sleep had brains roughly seven months older.

Published in eBioMedicine, the research used advanced imaging and machine learning to calculate “brain age” from over 1,000 features. A higher brain age than real age is considered an early sign of declining brain health. “Having an older brain age is an early indicator of a departure from optimal brain health,” the researchers wrote.

To measure sleep health, scientists used five fac