What happens when we don’t get enough sleep?

After weeks of very broken sleep thanks to my five month old daughter (who I’m convinced thinks sleep is optional!) I found myself awake at 2am Googling a slightly dramatic question.

What actually happens to my brain if I do not sleep?

It turns out that is is not dramatic at all. It is neuroscience.

Sleep is not just rest. It is biology in action.

While you are asleep, your brain switches into a completely different mode.

Special brain waves called slow waves pulse across the brain, helping move information from short term memory into long term storage.

That is one reason sleep helps you remember what you learned during the day.

At the same time, your brain carries out maintenance. Tiny support cells shrink slightly, allowing fluid to flow more freely between brain cells.

Scientists call this the glymphatic system.

It acts like a cleaning network, flushing away waste products that build up while you are awake.

Without sleep, those waste products accumulate.

After just one poor night, reaction time slows, attention drops and decision making becomes harder.

Hormones that control hunger, stress and growth become unbalanced.

Stay awake for too long and your immune system weakens, emotions become harder to manage and the brain can even experience brief lapses in function called microsleeps.

Children actually need more sleep than adults because their brains are still under construction.

Every single day, billions of neural connections are being built, strengthened and reorganised.

Sleep is when the brain decides which connections are worth keeping and which ones can be trimmed away. It is like overnight editing for your mind.

So no, sleep is not laziness. It is neurological maintenance. It is memory consolidation. It is biological repair.

It is your brain running its nightly software update, clearing the cache, backing up the files and installing new features.

And at 2am, it would very much prefer to be doing that important work than watching you Google, “How long can a human survive without sleep?”

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