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Don’t think you need sleep? What if we told you it boosts brain cell numbers

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Scientists at the University of Wisconsin believe they have discovered a new reason why we need to sleep – it replenishes your brain cells.

The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed that sleep ramps up the production of cells that go on to make an insulating material known as myelin which protects our brain’s circuitry.

In contrast, when the mice were forced to stay awake the cells went into stress response or died.

This is not the first piece of research showing that sleep can actually make you smarter.

A 2004 German study was one of the first to provide hard evidence supporting the common notion that creativity and problem solving appear to be linked to adequate sleep.

However, scientists are still unraveling the precise mysteries of why we sleep.

We are well aware of the effects of not getting enough sleep such as increased accident risk and increased risk of diseases such as diabetes, but we are still a long way from figuring out what happens to our bodies when we sleep.

Tips on how to get a quality nights sleep – from Psychology Today

  • Go to sleep at about the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning
  • Try not to nap after 4 o’clock
  • Perform relaxing activities in the hour before bedtime – try meditation
  • Avoid doing stimulating, frustrating or anxiety provoking activities in the bedroom such as watching television or studying
  • Limit alcohol, especially before bedtime
  • Avoid caffeine after noontime

Interested in learning more about data-driven fatigue management?

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or download our free eBook on the Science of Sleep for industrial workforces

New Swedish research on the relationship between sleep and fatigue is misleading and may be harmful

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On Friday August 2, new Swedish research conducted by the Stress Research Institute of Stockholm University, found that there may be little-to-no relation between how much sleep people get at night and how fatigued they feel.

The research to be released in late 2013, suggests that the number of hours slept is of much less importance in determining how a person functions throughout the day. It is actually genetically conditioned and dependent on age and health.

However, the findings from the study are not only misleading but in fact could be very harmful to the way the pubic perceives fatigue and how much sleep people actually need to be at peak alertness and effectiveness.

Swedish researchers asked 6000 people how long they slept and how fatigued they felt, but they could not find a relationship between how long people slept and how fatigued they felt.

Personally I don’t find this surprising, as it has been known for decades that self-reported sleep and self-reported fatigue are not very accurate.

In 2004, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania published a comprehensive study where they measured subjects’ actual sleep and actual fatigue levels using clinical level objective tests.  Their conclusion was that there was a large difference between what people report and how they actually perform on clinical testing.

Further, in September 2012, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published the largest study of its kind where they measured the actual sleep of 178 flight attendants using highly accurate, clinical level Readiband’s.  The flight attendants also took over 10,000 reaction tests.  The FAA was then able to correlate how sleep affects reaction time or fatigue.   The results showed that people do not normally feel fatigued until they lose 30% of their reaction time due to sleep loss. That is equivalent to the reaction time of people who are legally drunk at 0.08% blood alcohol.

This is why fatigue is such an insidious hazard. People can be mentally fatigued and be at a greatly increased accident risk, yet not even feel fatigued.  The Swedish research is simply misleading and reinforces the out dated notion that sleep does not affect our fatigue levels.

The National Sleep Foundation says it best:

“People underestimate how tired they are and think that they can stay awake by sheer force of will.” “This is a risky misconception,” says Thomas Balkin, Ph.D., Chairman of the National Sleep Foundation.

Would there be 1.9 million fatigue-related crashes or near misses if people were good at assessing their own ability to drive when fatigued?

Sleep is critical to human health, safety and performance.

In March the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that “insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic.” Which is why the public needs to better understand the critical link between sleep and fatigue, instead of listening to highly published inaccurate research.