2023-10-31 21:00:00
Don’t panic, your brain won’t shrink. | Ivan Oboleninov via Pexels
Everyone knows that going to bed too late can make you less alert the next day. But recent claims have gone further, conveying the idea that sleep Too little regularly might cause our brains to shrink. This idea has been challenged by one of the most comprehensive analyzes of brain scans carried out to date, says New Scientist.
Public health agencies, including those in the United States and the United Kingdom, advise adults to get between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. Anders Fjell, from the University of Oslo, and his team attempted to delve deeper into the question by conducting a study who used brain volume as an indicator of brain health. brain.
Everyone has their own ideal sleep duration
First, the researchers studied the relationship between brain volume and sleep duration, using existing data from around 47,000 people. The team then carried out another analysis, following around 4,000 people over a period of up to eleven years. In this case, there was no correlation between the duration of the sleep at the start of the study and the shrinking of the brain during this period. This might be because brain shrinkage leads to sleep problems, not the other way around.
Fjell and his team also carried out a third type of analysis, using genetic data from around 30,000 people. This analysis found that people genetically predisposed to sleep little or much do not have smaller brain volume than more moderate sleepers. “All of these results call into question the idea that lack of sleep causes brain shrinkage,” concludes Anders Fjell.
While he’s not advising anyone to deliberately change their sleep habits as a result of these findings, he does think…
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