While it’s important to seek treatment from a doctor for persistent sleep problems, you can take steps on your own to improve sleep when you have mild cognitive impairment.
Physical Activity
“There’s some strong evidence that exercise and physical activity could improve sleep in individuals with mild cognitive impairment,” says Callow. While you shouldn’t do vigorous exercise close to your bedtime, physical exertion earlier in the day can help make sure that you’re actually tired at the end of the day.
Many kinds of movement may help you sleep better, so pick an activity that works for you. “Exercise or physical activity that you stick with and enjoy the most, that you’ll actually do, is the best type of activity,” says Callow.
Light Therapy
For many people with insomnia, getting enough light exposure during the day is helpful. One intervention to help people do this, known as light therapy (or phototherapy), involves looking into a device known as a light box for a set amount of time, usually 20 to 40 minutes for a high-intensity light box.
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For some people, though, going outside to get bright, natural light in the morning and throughout the day can be enough to get the benefits of light therapy.
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Rocking Beds
While rocking a baby to sleep is a well-known practice, some adults with insomnia may benefit from this technique using a specialized rocking bed.
One key study, though, found that for young men who were good sleepers, using a rocking bed made no difference in either time until sleep onset or daytime cognitive performance.
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A study done in men and women between ages 60 and 75 similarly found that a rocking bed did not improve sleep.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
While different insomnia treatments work for different people, Varga says that the best evidence supports cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of talk therapy that helps people identify challenges and change behaviors.
In a study of 60 people with mild cognitive impairment and insomnia who were randomly assigned to either cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) or their usual care for 12 weeks, those in the CBT-I group showed improved sleep-related outcomes as well as improved cognitive performance in tests given three months and six months after the beginning of the study period.
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Depending on the cause of your sleep disturbances, medications may be helpful. Sometimes this can mean treating an underlying condition like RLS.
In other cases, sometimes including insomnia, your doctor may prescribe a medication to help directly with sleep. But these medications carry risks and should generally be used only when other measures aren’t successful on their own.
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For people with sleep apnea, using a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine is a well-established and often effective treatment.
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But as Varga points out, there are other potentially effective therapies, including other devices.
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“I think one of the things that frightens people away from treatment for sleep apnea is they think the only treatment is a CPAP machine,” he says.One emerging treatment for sleep disorders is noninvasive brain stimulation, which uses a magnetic field or a low-level electric current to increase activity in a targeted brain area.
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In a study of 110 older adults with mild cognitive impairment and sleep disorders, participants were randomly assigned to undergo either transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) or a sham treatment. After six weeks, the rTMS group scored better in measures of both sleep quality and cognitive performance.
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