Good sleep is important for good health, but too little or too much sleep can be harmful to the brain. This was revealed in a medical study in China.
Too little sleep means 4 hours or less, while too much sleep is defined as 10 hours or more and the ideal duration is 7 hours.
Research from the Peking University Clinical Research Institute found that people who sleep too little or too much need to be monitored for brain function.
Research has shown that more or less sleep does not lead to mental retardation, but it does.
Sleep is important because it allows our body and mind to be recharged, it is possible to stay healthy with proper sleep and prevent diseases.
Lack of sleep results in the brain not being able to function properly, making it difficult to concentrate, think and analyze memory.
According to the researchers, however, the mechanism behind this is not yet clear, it is possible that too much sleep duration leads to inflammation.
He added that too little sleep causes the brain to accumulate substances and proteins that cause Alzheimer’s disease.
The study collected data from more than 20,000 men and women who were part of another study.
The volunteers described their sleep habits and were tested for brain function.
The researchers found that people who slept 4 hours or less and 10 hours or more had lower scores on brain function tests than others.
This relationship has been dubbed the U.Ship Relationship because both groups have shown effects of sleep on brain function.
The results of the study were published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.
Earlier last year, a study from Boston University in the United States discovered that when humans sleep, something strange happens in their brain because as soon as the nerve cells become silent, blood flows out of the head. And a watery fluid begins to flow that cleanses the brain.
In fact, it cleanses the brain and helps protect the brain from dementia, a degenerative disease.
This fluid, called Carebrospinal Fluid (CSF), is found in the spinal cord and is thought to clear the brain of toxins that cause dementia.
Researchers say that people who get a good quality sleep routine also protect themselves from mental decline as they age.
“It’s a dramatic effect, CSF works during sleep, it’s something we didn’t know about before,” said Professor Laura Lewis, part of a research team published in the medical journal Science.
The study recruited 13 healthy people aged 23 to 33 and examined their brains with an MRI scanner during sleep.
At the same time, the scientists monitored a variety of activities in the volunteers’ brains and examined the nerve cells with electrodes, while MRI showed the presence of oxygenated blood that provides energy to those nerve cells.
Another MRI research team also examined the activity of CSF in the brain.
He observed that during sleep, electrical signals, also called delta waves, appeared, and a few seconds later, blood began to flow out of the head and then CSF began to fill the brain.
“We were shocked to see it because it was so shocking,” the researchers said.
In people with Alzheimer’s (the most common type of dementia), delta waves are weak and rare, affecting the blood flow to the brain, and the CSF does not complete the cleansing process during sleep.
As a result, toxic proteins accumulate and memory is affected.
The researchers said that in the past, CSF flow, blood flow and brain waves were analyzed separately, but now it has been proven that they are closely related, but it is not clear how close.
The research team hopes that they will now be able to understand the effects of aging on this process and will conduct separate research on the elderly. However, it is clear that good sleep increases the risk of dementia.