Sleepless Night Equals Dying Brain Cells

How're you holding up in the Polar Vortex this week?  Has it made your nights into a sleep vortex?  Painful hours disappearing in your pillow as you struggle to get enough sleep?  I hope not.  Colder temperatures are generally better for sleeping, so maybe this has all meant a better night's sleep for you.

New study to talk about.  Remember those all-night study sessions you did to graduate college?  The coffee, the pizza, the books, the loud music?  Yeah, well, according to a new study, losing a night's sleep kills brain cells.

That's right, researchers at Sweden's Uppsala University looked into the minds of people staying up all night and found chemicals in their blood that indicated brain damage.  Ew!  That's not what you wanted to read, was it?  

To get the findings, the researchers kept 15 healthy young men up all night, then looked for signs of neuron damage, impaired blood brain barrier function, or both.   And yes, they found it, according to the report published in the journal, "Sleep."

Levels of the chemicals NSA and S-100B in the subjects brains rose.  The findings are considered a sign that lack of sleep could mean loss of brain tissue, according to Uppsala Professor Christian Benedict, quoted in the Daily Mail.

Hey... it was just a one-nighter!

When you think about all the times you've gotten home a little too late, had a cup (or three) to many, or procrastinated a project until the last day and then gone 24/7 after it, you start to feel an uncomfortable little tingle... at the base of your brain.

Don't do it.  Get home on time.  Stop the caffeine early.  Tune out the tech.  Head for bed.  And say your prayers you haven't already killed too many brain cells.  There's more here.  Time to get on it!