I want to share something personal with you this week. Something that drives a lot of what I do, how I live, and honestly, why I care so much about this community and the conversations we have here. So today, I’m sharing why sleep is one of the most powerful things you can do to protect your brain after 50.
My dad has Alzheimer’s.
Watching someone you love slowly lose access to their own memories and their own self is one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.
Last year, through Function Health, I learned some unwanted news. I found out that I carry the APOE4 gene, which is the genetic variant most strongly associated with Alzheimer’s risk. Not on one side. Both sides. Which means my risk is significantly elevated, and there is nothing I can do to change that particular fact.
But here is what I CAN do…
I can control everything in my power around it, aka, my lifestyle.
That is why I train four times a week without negotiating with myself about it. It is why I eat clean about ninety percent of the time. Thank goodness I stopped drinking years ago! Knowing what I know now about sleep and brain health, I will be honest, that feels like a gift I did not even know I was giving myself at the time.
And it’s why sleep has recently become something I am taking far more seriously than I ever did before… especially now that I’m well over 50.
For most of my life I genuinely took sleep for granted. I never tracked it, never thought much about it, and honestly assumed I was fine. It was not until I started digging into the research, partly out of fear and partly out of a deep desire to do everything within my power to protect my brain, that I realized how much I had been leaving on the table. That ignorance is part of why I feel such urgency to share this with you now.
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Sleep Over 50 Is Not Rest. It Is Maintenance.
Most of us think of sleep as the absence of being awake. We close our eyes, we stop moving, and we assume our body is just sitting idle until morning. But what is actually happening during deep sleep is one of the most active and critical processes your body performs in a 24-hour period.
In 2013, neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard and her team at the University of Rochester discovered that the brain has its own dedicated waste removal system called the glymphatic system. During deep sleep, the brain’s cells shrink by up to 60 percent, which opens channels that allow cerebrospinal fluid to flow through and flush out toxic waste that has accumulated throughout the day. One of the primary things being cleared is amyloid beta, the protein that builds up in the brains of people who develop Alzheimer’s disease.
Let that land for a second. Your brain is literally cleaning itself while you sleep. And if you are not getting enough deep, quality sleep on a consistent basis, that process does not happen the way it is supposed to. The waste builds up. Over years, that buildup has consequences.
Dr. Matthew Walker, one of the world’s leading sleep researchers, has described sleep deprivation as one of the most significant modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s that we currently know of. Not a minor footnote. A major factor. And one we actually have some control over.
You cannot change your genetics. But you can change how well you protect the brain you have. And it turns out, a lot of that protection happens while you are asleep.
The Part Alcohol Plays in All of This
For a long time, I used alcohol to wind down at night. And it worked, at least in the short term. It helped me fall asleep faster. What I did not understand at the time was what it was doing to the quality of that sleep once I was under.
Alcohol suppresses REM sleep and disrupts the deep sleep stages where that glymphatic cleaning process takes place. Research has shown that even one to two drinks can reduce overall sleep quality by up to 24 percent!
So you might sleep eight hours and still wake up feeling like you barely slept, because your brain never got the restoration it was trying to get. The three o’clock wake-up that so many people chalk up to stress or aging? For a lot of people, alcohol is the actual culprit.
I share this not to add to anyone’s shame, but because I think most people genuinely don’t know the connection. I did not know it fully until I started looking into what I was risking given my own genetic picture. Once I understood it, continuing to treat sleep as optional or alcohol as a harmless sleep aid was no longer something I could rationalize.
Sleep Is One Piece of a Much Bigger Picture
Sleep is not the whole answer. It is one critically important piece of a much larger picture of how we take care of ourselves as we get older.
The FINGER study, one of the largest lifestyle intervention trials ever conducted on cognitive health, followed over 1,200 adults at elevated risk for cognitive decline. What they found was that a combination of regular physical activity, quality nutrition, cognitive engagement, and sleep measurably reduced cognitive decline over a two-year period. Not one thing in isolation. The combination of all of them working together.
That is exactly why I train. Why I am intentional about what I eat. Why I’m glad I stopped drinking. Why I take sleep seriously. Not because I am afraid, (although I will admit that my dad’s diagnosis has given me a very real and personal reason to pay attention!), but because I understand now that these are not separate habits. They are a system. And every part of that system either protects the brain or slowly works against it.
The question I keep asking myself, and the one I want to offer to you this week, is this: which direction is your system currently pointing?
A Few Honest Things to Consider This Week
How would you honestly rate your sleep quality right now?
Not just how many hours you are getting, but how you actually feel when you wake up. Restored and clear, or foggy and already behind? That distinction matters more than the number on your phone’s sleep tracker.
Is there something you are using to fall asleep that might be working against you?
Alcohol, screens, eating late, erratic bedtimes. These are not moral failures. They are habits that have costs most people have not fully accounted for. And in midlife, those costs start to compound in ways they did not in our thirties.
What are you doing consistently to protect your brain health long term?
Movement, nutrition, sleep, social connection, reduced alcohol. The research is increasingly clear that these things together make a measurable difference. Not one or two of them. The whole picture working together.
This Week on Beyond the Gray Podcast
Tuesday’s episode (#10), is one I have genuinely been looking forward to sharing. I brought in my very first guest, my friend Morgan Adams, who is a holistic sleep coach with a story that will stop you in your tracks.
We cover:
- The sleep myths most adults over 50 are still holding onto
- What alcohol is actually doing to your rest
- The tools that make a real difference
- The one gray area around sleep she says people tolerate way too long
Given everything I just shared with you, I think you can understand why this conversation felt so important for me to have on this show. I hope you will tune in Tuesday morning.
I want to close with this. You cannot control everything. I cannot control my genetics, and neither can you control yours. But we have far more influence over how this next chapter of life goes than most people are exercising right now. And that influence starts with the daily decisions that seem small in the moment but add up to everything over time.
Sleep is not a luxury. It is part of the foundation. And so is everything else we have been talking about here together. Much more to come on all of this.
There is life beyond the gray,
Kari
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