When you lay down at 7 a.m. on January 1, you have a serious sleep deficit. Fatigue can be read on your surrounded face, which remembers the excesses of New Year’s Eve. What we do not suspect is that the brain also suffers from this lack of rest. The University of Uppsala (Sweden) released a study on the harmful effects of the sleepless night on the brain. The researchers analyzed the blood of fifteen healthy young men, some of whom had just slept eight hours, others had sleepless nights.
The results, to appear in the scientific journal Sleep, seriously make us want to go back to bed. They show that in volunteers lacking sleep, the concentration of two molecules in the brain, enolase, linked to neurons, and the S-100 B protein, increased by 20%. “The number of these molecules in the brain usually increases in the blood on the occasion of brain damage”, translated in a press release taken up by AFP, the coordinator of the study, Christian Benedict. In other words, “a lack of sleep can promote the processes of neurodegeneration”. Conversely, a good night’s sleep “could be of critical importance for maintaining brain health”.
The proven benefits of good sleep
These conclusions are not surprising since they support the scientific literature on the importance of sleep on the brain. It has recently been known that the brain is a formidable machine which cleans all the toxins and wastes accumulated in the brain cells. It also provides a repair function of cells essential for the proper functioning of our nervous system.
Finally, American researchers recently suggested that the brain function of insomniacs was not optimized and therefore more prone to memory problems.
