Loss of Sleep = Smaller Brain

A recent study confirmed the general notion that the cognitive abilities of a human are diminished during periods involving lack of normal sleep. It has long been known that a person with diminished sleep will score more poorly on academic and cognitive testing. A more recent finding explains the need for sleep – that during sleep the brain and its surrounding tissues and fluids are cleaned and washed. It is therefore no surprise that a recent study (Sexton CE et al. 2014) showed that in humans with reduced sleep, the volume of their brain was found to be diminished.

The significance of sleep or lack of sleep has traditionally been talked about as a relatively unimportant phenomenon that has no lasting or systemic damage to our bodies, but this attitude must and will soon change as the biological and objective damages of disruptive sleep become more and more evident.