Could lack of sleep age your brain? Lack of sleep can age brain structures overnight, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Let’s take a look at the details together.
It turns out that lack of sleep also ages your brain
According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, even a single night of sleep deprivation can cause your brain to age. As the brain ages, its cognitive functions decrease and chemical changes occur.
Sleep is an important time for our body to relieve the tiredness of the day and recover. Our brain does the same thing as our body in this process. Memory consolidation, clearing toxins, and creating new neural pathways only happen while we sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, your brain won’t have enough time to perform important functions and cognitive functions will be affected.
This study investigates how sleep affects the age of brain structures using MRIs. Participants included 134 healthy volunteers aged 19 to 39 years, with a mean age of 25.3 years.
Four sleep conditions were measured during the study: total sleep deprivation (no sleep at all), partial sleep deprivation (sleeping three hours), and chronic deprivation (sleeping five hours over five days) and the control group (sleeping eight hours).
He was born 2 thousand 560 years ago! New Pole Star: T Coronae Borealis
What if we were to say that the universe will gift us the T Coronae Borealis star with a new explosion in the coming days? Here are the details…
Of the four groups, only the total sleep deprivation group was found to have brain age consistently increased by one to two years after a single night of sleep deprivation. It was determined that brain age did not change significantly in other groups. Additionally, a full night’s sleep reverses the effects of aging on the brain.
This study has some limitations regarding the age of the participants and the duration of the study. Therefore, more research is needed to investigate the long-term effects of sleep deprivation across different age groups and sleep habits.
So if you feel like your brain is slowing down, what you need to do is definitely sleep. If you experience persistent insomnia, the aging effects of the brain may be permanent. What are you thinking? Please don’t forget to share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.