通宵熬夜会让你的身体发生这些……
There are times when it's unavoidable - a dissertation is due, a family member is in the emergency room, it's make-or-break for your company - but you should be aware of just how damaging pulling an all nighter can be for your body. Neuroscientists from Norway looked closely at the potential repercussions on our health, and it's not pretty (as you might expect if you've ever suffered a sleepless night). They recruited 21 healthy young men to undergo a series of diffusion tensor imaging (or DTI) tests, which indicate water diffusion in the body and thus the health of the nervous system. The volunteers stayed awake for 23 hours, and to provide some control conditions, they weren't allowed to consume alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine during the study, and they couldn't eat anything before a DTI scan. The 2015 report pointed to "significant" changes in the white matter inside the brain after a night with no sleep, finding that "sleep deprivation was associated with widespread fractional anisotropy". In other words, a degradation of the 'connectivity' networks inside the brain - something you might have felt first-hand if you've ever tried to collect your thoughts after a sleepless night. Changes were noticed throughout the brain, covering the corpus callosum, brainstem, thalamus, fronto temporal and parieto-occipital tracts. What's not quite as clear is how permanent this damage is: could a long sleep the next night repair all the damage that's been done, for example? |