A lack of sleep may be shrinking your brain, new study suggests

We all know that not getting enough sleep leaves us groggy and grumpy, but new research says a lack of shut-eye can actually shrink our brains, too.

And it appears that lower brain volumes makes sleepy folks higher risks for not only memory loss but dementia developing later in life as well.

The study, published this week in the Journal of Neurology, took MRI scans of the brains of 147 adults between the age of 20 and 85 years old and looked at how their brain volumes changed over five years, and attempted to correlate this with their sleep habits over that same time period.

Participants were asked on questionnaires over the course of the study whether they had trouble either falling asleep or staying asleep.

What the scientists found was a third of the subjects had chronically poor sleeping habits, which ended up being clearly linked to a plummeting volume of their brains. And this tissue shrinkage was widespread, throughout the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes of the brain.

A number of studies in just the past few years have repeatedly shown that lack of sleep is a much bigger issue than just not getting your beauty rest. It can affect your sex life, mess with your skin and cause accidents. Turns out that sleep loss has been implicated in some of the world’s biggest man-made disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.

In fact, just in the U.S. alone, some 100,000 car accidents and over 1,500 deaths on the road are directly related to fatigue caused by drowsiness.

While everyone can get away with missing a few hours of sleep here and there, chronic lack of sleep has been shown to be downright bad for your heath.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to everything from high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and even some cancers.

Improving on our sleeping habits, however, allows the brain to repair itself and slow or even possibly prevent it from shrinking, according to Claire Sextontold, the study’s lead author in a recent interview with CTV News.

How to get that good night sleep? Doctors suggest getting into a routine bedtime ritual when hitting the sack. Stick to a regular schedule of going to bed and getting up at the same time, regardless of weekends or holidays. Make sure to get regular exercise during day and make sure to leave tablets and mobile devices out of the bedroom.

While scientists of this week’s study are not sure if brain shrinking causes loss of sleep or the other way around, one thing is for sure – past research has already shown that losing all that brain volume will leave you stupider.

Great, now I have something else to lose sleep over!