HOW SLEEP DEPRIVATON IS AFFECTING YOU BRAIN !

• you know that awful feeling you get when you're sleep-deprived your brain feels fuzzy your body aches with fatigue and you could literally fall asleep anywhere in our modern fast-paced society it's become a common struggle to get a full night's rest and while you may think that a simple cup of coffee or an occasional energy drink will cure your tiredness researchers are now finding that sleep deprivation can have a far more serious consequence on your body than you might think so why do we sleep virtually every creature on earth sleeps in it's a vital process for our continued survival while it may appear that sleep is simply a time for our bodies to shut down the reality couldn't be more different there are two main ways in which we benefit from sleep our physical health and our mental health while we sleep our bodies take the time to repair and rejuvenate themselves human growth hormone is released which allows muscles to grow damage to tissues to be replaced other hormones to be produced and for the cells to prepare themselves for the following days activities the brain uses this time to sift through all of the information it has collected throughout the day and process it and decide what's important and needs to be retained and what is irrelevant further to this the brain performs physical repairs on itself as well the neurons in the brain are refreshed and restored by two different types of glial cells often thought of as the support structure of the nervous system microglia cells are responsible for removing neurons that have become old wore worn out by a process known as phagocytosis which means devour in greek the other type of glial cells the astrocytes altered the synapses which connected neurons to ensure that their structure is as efficient as possible so what if we don't get enough sleep a study conducted in Italy looked at mammalian brains during sleeping Wow they were sleep deprived and found stark similarities between what was going on they noticed that in sleep-deprived brains the glial cells were still functioning but in an elevated and seemingly uncontrolled way their experiments involved four test groups of mice the first group would act as the control and be allowed to sleep normally the second group wore walking up from their sleep at regular intervals Wow the third group represented sleep deprivation and were kept awake for an extra eight hours and the fourth group represented chronic sleep deprivation and were kept awake for five days in a row the researchers didn't looked at the activity of the astrocytes cells they saw activity in 5.7% of the synapses of the well-rested brings and is 7.3 percent of the synapses in the spontaneously awake brains but it was the sleep-deprived brains that surprised researchers the most in these cells the astrocytes had taken on a new role and started to behave like micro glial cells actually devouring the synapses instead of rewiring them in the sleep-deprived brains dust was seeing in 8.4 percent of the synapses and in the chronically sleep-deprived rings it was seeing in 13.5 percent of them the researchers also noted that the synapses that tend to be involved were the largest and the oldest ones which isn't necessarily a bad thing in the short term this process could help clean out harmful debris and to remove worn-out connections and whatever the new ones to thrive but in the long term this is a problem because uncontrolled the microbial activity has been linked to Alzheimer's and other degenerative brain conditions this could explain why a lack of sleep seems to make people more vulnerable to these illnesses beyond this there are a number of other health issues that can arise if you don't get enough sleep you may start to experience memory problems sore muscles headaches and irritability you have an increased risk of diabetes and depression your blood pressure can rise and you get sick more often and you can even experience hallucinations in conclusion even though it's something that we all do and quite frankly can't live without there's still a lot about sleep that we don't fully understand well getting more sleep over time help to reverse the effects were protect a brain from a few sleepless nights studies are continually showing that sleep disorders are linked to many other conditions and this reinforces how important it is for us to sleep well in this day and age as perhaps more important than ever to do so but we really do need to try otherwise there could be serious consequences for our health later down the road thank you all so much for watching this video if you enjoy it make sure to give us a like or a comment down hello see you next time