Lack of sleep causes a form of cerebral autophagy where astrocytes, the brain's cleaning cells, begin to destroy healthy synapses and neurons.

noli's read

This advice is based on neuroscience research regarding the role of the glymphatic system and glial cells during rest. A landmark study by Bellesi et al. (2017), published in the Journal of Neuroscience, demonstrated in mice that chronic sleep deprivation activates astrocytes, which then phagocytose more synaptic components. It is accurate that the brain 'cleans itself' during sleep and that this process is impaired in cases of deprivation. However, the use of the terms 'cannibalize' or 'eating itself' is a strong simplification that may be perceived as a dramatic exaggeration of the actual biological process. While the correlation between sleep deprivation and the degradation of synaptic connectivity is scientifically documented in animals, directly extrapolating this massive 'self-consumption' to humans still requires nuance, although the mechanism of excessive cleaning is a serious hypothesis. The research primarily highlights a loss of connection efficiency rather than a systematic, global self-destruction.

the sources

1. 1Xie L, Kang H, Xu Q, et al. 2013