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Sleep Found To Replenish a Type of Brain Cell
New submitter wrackspurt writes "Sleep deprivation has long been thought to be prevalent in the industrialized world. A new study (abstract) explains one very good reason why at least seven hours of sleep a night is necessary. Quoting the BBC: 'Sleep ramps up the production of cells that go on to make an insulating material known as myelin which protects our brain's circuitry. ... The increase was most marked during the type of sleep that is associated with dreaming - REM or rapid eye movement sleep — and was driven by genes. In contrast, the genes involved in cell death and stress responses were turned on when the mice were forced to stay awake.'"
Is it possible that controlled sleep deprivation could result in the culling of strictly unnecessary brain cells, so that the overall result is a more power-efficient brain? The first time I pulled an all-nighter to work on mentally taxing problems, I had to sleep 19 hours to recover. After doing that kind of work regularly, only a few hours or recovery became necessary.
Because 16 hours is a long time to go without food, even if you are asleep the whole time. You need to strike an appropriate balance between rest and nutrition and activity. We have lost our natural rhythm.
We have enough studies telling you not to do this particular thing where you feel like complete and utter crap if you do.
Well, cool. You must feel pretty proud about learning absolutely nothing from this study except how your preconceived notions (aka "common sense") were correct to brag about it here and bash the authors for their useless work, but personally, I was fascinated by the info about sleep mediating gene activation and its effects on myelin growth.
Providing a mechanism to explain why you feel like utter crap is important -- especially for people who just like to soldier through chronic sleep deprivation and say they can handle it. Turns out, no, you can't -- you're literally killing your brain slowly, and that candle you're burning will run out much quicker. I've been trying to get myself into bed earlier each night, and I've heard studies that tell me that I'm shortening my life by not getting enough sleep, but now I know how and why and that I may be doing long-term brain damage by not fixing that problem, and that provides extra impetus to stop coasting and solve it right now.
This article, in the long run, may save my life (or at least greatly extend it) by giving the final kick in the pants to do something solid about it. (Especially since I'm half-dead today from lack of sleep.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I think we'd all be amused watching you try.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
That's about spot on. You falling asleep quicker would account for the discrepancies, it takes most people thirty minutes to fall asleep.
When it's said that you should get eight hours of sleep per night, what's actually meant is that you should get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in a dark, silent, and comfortable room on a consistent and precise schedule.
Naturally there's more to sleep than simply duration. A lot more, in fact.
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I envy people like you. For some reason fate has decided to curse me to severe insomnia, and I require sleeping pills to maintain anything remotely normal.
It's worth taking an informed approach to sleep instead of just assuming "I need 9 hours". We sleep such a large percentage of our lives, and most of us really don't give much thought to it.
So you changed multiple factors. Great. Now we have no idea what to do. Was it the better mattress or the Android app? Or was it the pillow?
You've changed too many things to gather any useful information about your sleep.