Study: Long-Term Sleep Deprivation Can Lead to Brain Damage

If you regularly pull all-nighters, beware. Research has found that long-term sleep deprivation can lead to lasting brain damage.

This finding contradicts the idea that you can pay back a "sleep debt" by sleeping for longer hours on the weekend or the next available opportunity.

The researchers found that long-term sleep deprivation zaps the brain of power even after days of recovery sleep, which could be a sign of a brain injury.

During their experiment, the researchers put mice on a sleep schedule that mirrors that of a shift worker. They let them sleep, then woke them up for short periods, and then for long ones. When they examined the mice's brains, they found damage to the nerve cells in their brains in the area associated with alertness and cognitive function. They believe that when the mice lost a little sleep, the nerve cells reacted by making more of a protein that would energize and protect them. However, when losing sleep became a habit, that reaction shut down and the cells began dying off at an accelerated pace.

To learn more, click here.