“Wait! WHAT!” Your sleep-deprived brain might be shouting right now. We’re all guilty of binging a few too many shows on Netflix or we allowed our work-from-home-balance to tip to the live-at-work-balance. Leaving us all a little less-rested and apparently with a smaller brain. 😜
Researchers have found that persistently poor sleep causes the brain to clear a significant amount of neurons and synaptic connections, and recovering sleep might not be able to reverse the damage.
In 2017, a team led by neuroscientist Michele Bellesi from the Marche Polytechnic University in Italy examined the mammalian brain’s response to poor sleeping habits and found a bizarre similarity between well-rested and sleepless mice.
Like the cells elsewhere in your body, the neurons in your brain are being constantly refreshed.
We’ve known that this process occurs when we sleep to clear away the neurological wear and tear of the day, but now it appears that the same thing happens when we start to lose sleep.
But rather than being a good thing, the brain goes overboard with the clearing and starts to harm itself instead.
Think of it like the garbage being cleared out while you’re asleep, versus someone coming into your house after several sleepless nights and indiscriminately tossing out your television, fridge, and the family dog.
“We show for the first time that portions of synapses are literally eaten by astrocytes because of chronic sleep loss,” Bellesi told Andy Coghlan at New Scientist.
Take action: What should you do about this though?
Studies have shown that regular deep meditation can help in two ways:
- Getting into deep meditation can downregulate your brainwaves to a wavelength consistent with deep sleep, supplying your brain with more of the rest that it requires.
- A brain that is well trained to enter a meditative state, is also proven to fall asleep easier at night, and naturally follow a more regular sleep pattern.
You can join our daily guided meditations for free by following this link: https://wp.me/P8Nxbl-nX
Link to original article: https://www.sciencealert.com/mammal-brain-will-start-eating-itself-when-it-doesn-t-get-enough-sleep
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash