From Neuroscience News:
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found compelling evidence that poor sleep – particularly a deficit of the deep, restorative slumber needed to hit the save button on memories – is a channel through which the beta-amyloid protein believed to trigger Alzheimer’s disease attacks the brain’s long-term memory. (Full article: http://neurosciencenews.com/amyloid-beta-sleep-alzheimers-2079/)
The data in the research is interesting and worth a read for that, but the article write-up oversells the research. There is a relationship between poor sleep and the build-up of beta-amyloid, but (as the end of the article admits) there is no clear understanding whether poor sleep causes the build-up of protein, or the build-up causes the poor sleep. Or perhaps a third thing is causing both.
We need to understand more of what is going on.