Sleep Found To Replenish a Type of Brain Cell 136
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.'"
Linus Torvalds on sleep (Score:4, Interesting)
"A lot of people believe in working long days and doing double,triple, or even quadruple shifts. I’m not one of them. Neither Transmeta nor Linux has ever gotten in the way of a good night’s sleep. In fact, if you want to know the honest truth, I’m a firm believer in sleep. Some people think that’s just being lazy, but I want to throw my pillow at them. I have a perfectly valid excuse, and I’m standing by it: You may lose a few hours of your productive daytime if you sleep, oh, say, ten hours a day, but those few hours when you are awake, you are alert and your brain functions on all six cylinders. Or four or whatever."
from "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond
Re:I think its safe to say (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's one thing to say lack of sleep makes you sleepy and ineffective.
To me it sounds like something else entirely to say the myelin isn't getting replenished -- especially since myelin breakdown has been linked with Alzheimer's and dementia.
So (based on my complete lack of attending med school) ... doesn't this potentially make more longer term problems in the brain?
My read on this is this has much broader implications than how you're going to be ineffective the next day. As in, in the long run, your brain may simply be degrading more than it can keep up with than if you'd had enough sleep over that time.
Next time the wife complains when I go take a nap, I'll remind her that I'm re-building my myelin and I need to do that so I don't get any dumber. :-P
Re:I know that I need mine (Score:5, Interesting)
1 Hour, Things after a few hours start to move funny
2 Hours, I go for an hour or so, then I doze in and out for the rest of the day
3 Hours, I go a few hours, and blink out for a few minutes every half an hour
4 Hours, I can get threw the day, but I can't do much
5 Hours, I am am at reduced functionally
6 Hours, I can function during the day, but I am tired.
7 Hours, I am fine, however I am kinda grumpy
8 Hours, No problems
9 Hours, A lot of sleep and a LOT of energy
10 Hours, Too much sleep and I am kinda groggy
11 Hours of sleep I get Grumpy again
12 Hour a sleep I wander around like a zombie I spend the day like I just woke up.
Re:I know that I need mine (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think I needed more sleep than average. But once I put a little thought into my sleep patterns and methods, I learned a real lesson about it. My wife and I spent a little money on a really good mattress (OK, it wasn't so little) and really good pillows (You ought to try MyPillow). Then, on a lark I tried using an Android app on my Nexus 7 called "Sleep as Android", which tracked my movement as I slept and tried to wake me when my sleep was the shallowest. Then, it graphs out your sleep patters (when you're sleeping deeply and not moving and when you're restless or snoring or tossing and turning). Finally, when you wake up you rate how you feel on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. After the few months, I was surprised to find that when I sleep between 7:15hrs and 7:30hrs I felt best and had the best, most productive days. Occasionally, I would try to sleep 8 or more hours and I'd never feel as well or work as well.
So now, I sleep almost exactly 7:15hr to 7:30hr every night. I wake up without an alarm and fall asleep quickly and have great dreams. (the app has some "lucid dreaming" features that will play a little sound when you get into the deepest sleep state, and that got me in the habit of lucid dreaming - during which I'm almost always playing music, for some reason).
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.