What Do Sleep Medications Do to Your Brain?

Key Takeaways

• Sleep aids might cause toxic proteins to pollute the brain

• Zolpidem disrupted in lab mice a process that clears these proteins from the brain

• These proteins can form hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease

MONDAY, Jan. 13, 2025 (HealthDay news) -- The sleep aid Ambien could be allowing toxic proteins to pollute the brain, potentially increasing a person’s risk of disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.

Drugs like the main ingredient in Ambien, zolpidem, suppresses a system designed to clear protein waste from the brain during dreamless sleep, a mouse study published Jan. 8 in the journal Cell shows.

The study “calls attention to the potentially detrimental effects of certain pharmacological sleep aids on brain health, highlighting the necessity of preserving natural sleep architecture for optimal brain function,” senior researcher Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, co-director of the University of Rochester Center for Translational Neuromedicine, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers used brain imaging along with electrical brain readings to track the activity in lab mice of the glymphatic system, a brain-wide network responsible for clearing away waste proteins.

They found that tightly synchronized oscillations occur in the brain during deep sleep, involving cerebral blood, spinal fluid and the biochemical norepinephrine.

Norepinephrine is a brain chemical involved in the “fight or flight” response, and is associated with arousal, attention and stress.

During sleep, norepinephrine triggers rhythmic constriction of blood vessels independent of a person’s heartbeat, researchers found.

This oscillation generates the pumping action that powers the glymphatic system, which removes toxic proteins like tau and amyloid -- proteins known to build up and form tangles and plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

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“These findings, combined with what we know about the glymphatic system, paint the whole picture of the dynamics inside the brain, and these slow waves, micro-arousals, and the norepinephrine were the missing link,” lead researcher Natalie Hauglund, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, said in a news release.

Researchers also explored whether sleep aids might interfere with this natural process, and found that zolpidem suppresses norepinephrine oscillations.

In turn, this disrupts the glymphatic system and impedes the waste-clearing processes in the brain, researchers said.

Further research should be conducted to see whether long-term use of sleep aids like zolpidem might influence a person’s risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s, researchers concluded.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more about the glymphatic system.

SOURCE: University of Rochester Medical Center, news release, Jan. 8, 2025

What This Means For You

Midlife folks and seniors should talk with their doctor about the sleep aids they are taking, and whether they are safe for long-term use.