TED | 睡眠不足会发生什么

每个人都会有熬夜的经历，但你知道熬夜的危害吗？短期来说，睡眠不足会导致学习能力和反应能力下降；长期来看，还会增加肥胖和糖尿病的几率！看完这个视频，你还敢熬夜吗？

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=i0391pvxio2&width=500&height=375&auto=0

In 1965, 17 year-old high school student Randy Gardner stay awake for 264 hours, that’s all days, to see how he'd cope without sleep. On the second day, his eyes stopped focusing. Next, he lose the ability to identify objects by touch. By day three, Gardner was moody anduncoordinated. At the end of the experiment, he was struggling to concentrate,had trouble with short term memory, became paranoid (偏执的) and started hallucinating (产生幻觉).

Although Gardner recovered without long term psychological or physical damage, for others, losing shut-eye can result in hormone imbalance (激素分泌失衡)， illness,and extreme cases, death. We’re only beginning to understand why we sleep tobegin with, but we do know it’s essential.

Adults need 7 to 8 hours sleep at night, and adolescents need about 10.We grow sleepy due the signals from our body telling our brain we are tired,and signals from the environment telling us it’s dark outside. The rise in sleep including chemicals, like adenosine(腺苷) and melatonin(褪黑素), send us into a light dose that grow deeper, making our breathing and heart rate slowdown and our muscles relax. This non REM sleep (非快速眼动睡眠) is when DNA is repaired and our bodies replenish (补给) themselves for the day ahead.

In the United States, it’s estimated that 30% of adults and 66% of adolescents are regularly sleep-deprived (睡眠不足). This isn’t just a minor inconvenience. Staying awake can cause serious bodily harm. When we lose sleep, learning, memory, mood, and reaction time are affected. Sleeplessness may also cause inflammation (炎症), hallucination (幻觉), high blood pressure (高血压), and it’s even been linked to diabetes and obesity.

In 2014, a devoted soccer fan died after staying awake for 48 hours to watch the World Cup. While his untimely death was due to a stroke, studies show that chronically sleeping fewer than 6 hours a night increases stroke risk by 45 times, compared to those getting consistent 7 to 8 hours of shut-eye.

For a handful of people on the planet who carry a rare inherited genetic mutation (罕见变异遗传基因), sleeplessness is a daily reality. The condition known as Fatal Familial Insomnia (致命性家族性失眠症), places the body in a night mirror state of wakefulness,forbidding it from entering the sanctuary of sleep. Within months or years,this progressively worsening condition leads to dementia (精神错乱) and death.

How can sleep deprivation cause such immense suffering? Scientists think the answer lies with accumulation of waste products in the brain. During our waking hours, our cells are busy using up our day’s energy sources which get broken down into various by-products (副产品), including adenosine. As adenosine builds up, it increases the urge to sleep, also known as sleep pressure. In fact, caffeine (咖啡因) works by blocking adenosine receptor pathways. Other waste products also build up in the brain, and if they’re not cleared away, they collectively overload the brainand are thought lead to the many negative symptoms of sleep deprivation.

So what’s happening in our brain when we sleep, to prevent this? Scientists found something called the Glymphatic System (类淋巴系统), aclean-up mechanism that removes this build up and is much more active when we’re asleep. It works by using cerebrospinal fluid (脑脊髓液) to flush away toxic by-products that accumulated between cells. Lymphatic vessels (淋巴血管), which serve as pathways for immune cells have recently been discovered in the brain,and they may also play a role in clearing out the brains daily waste products.

While scientists continue exploring the restorative mechanism behind sleep, we can be sure that sleeping into slumber is a necessity. If we wanna maintain our health and our sanity.

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