People who sleep in shifts or at off hours — particularly members of the military — are at higher risk of suffering negative neurological effects later, according to a recent study funded in part by the U.S. Army.
Researchers found that shift work disturbs the biological processes that clear toxic proteins out of your brain, so even though you may be sleeping in shifts and getting seven or eight hours of sleep, it may not be the right kind of continuous sleep that your body needs to stay healthy.
In the same way your body’s lymphatic system removes toxins from your bloodstream, your glymphatic system removes bad proteins from your brain. But, very little is understood about the glymphatic system. Research showed that the glymphatic system is deeply connected to circadian rhythms. Travel and shift work create what Frederick Gregory, program manager of neurophysiology of Cognition at the Army Research Office, calls “circadian arrhythmia.”
“It leads to some kind of desynchronization,” Gregory said. “We don’t even know what those processes are yet. Those are some of the fundamental questions that we are looking to address in this project.”
Source: Defense One Sept. 27, 2020