Good sleep is crucial for your overall health, but new research suggests it could impact your dementia risk, too. Of course, your individual risk of dementia can be raised by a variety of factors, but it's good to keep this in mind. Meet the experts: W. Christopher Winter, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and host of the podcast. The researchers discovered 35 percent of study participants who had extreme daytime sleepiness went on to develop MCR. If I can’t get eight hours, would naps help prevent dementia?