Sleep washes away
toxic gunk that builds up in your brain. Do you really want to leave it there?
It doesn't take a PhD to figure out that sleep
is essential. Anyone who's struggled to get through the next day after a late
night out can tell you that.
But researchers are constantly adding
interesting new additions to the long list of reasons we sleep, from cementing new learning, to scrubbing the
emotional charge from painful memories, to preventing you from having crabby fights with your
partner (yes, this has been scientifically proven).
And now a team out of Boston University has
added yet another reason to the list and it's particularly bad news for those
who don't manage to get enough shut eye: sleep
physically washes toxins, including those that can lead to Alzheimers, from
your brain.
A carwash for you
brain
The new study published
in the journal Science and highlighted in Wired (hat
tip Kottke) builds on
earlier studies with mice that suggested sleep physically cleans out toxins
that build up around the brain due to its normal function. Was something
similar going on with humans? Biomedical engineer Laura Lewis asked a bunch of
study subjects to take a snooze in an MRI machine to find out.
"What she discovered was that during
non-REM sleep, large, slow waves of cerebrospinal fluid were washing over the
brain. The EEG readings helped show why. During non-REM sleep, neurons start to
synchronize, turning on and off at the same time," explains Wired's Sara
Harrison. "Because the neurons had all momentarily stopped firing, they
didn't need as much oxygen. That meant less blood would flow to the brain. But
Lewis's team also observed that cerebrospinal fluid would then rush in, filling
in the space left behind."
In short, completely non-scientific terms,
sleep allows your brain to take a bath, washing off all the toxins that
build up just as part of the day's daily business.
Good news for
Alzheimer's patients, bad news for the sleep deprived
That news is most important for Alzheimer's
patients as it may open up a pathway to new treatments focused on
"increasing the amount of cerebrospinal fluid that washes over the
brain," writes Harrison. "Finding a way to clear out all of that
garbage could be much more powerful than just focusing on one piece of the
problem" with drugs.
But it's not just those suffering from
Alzheimer's or one of the many other psychiatric and neurological connections
that may be linked to a buildup of brain toxins who should take note. As Maiken
Nedergaard, an outside sleep expert who commented on the new study
for Scientific American commented, this research has
implications for just about everyone who sleeps.
"Maybe the most important take-home
message is that sleep is a serious thing," he says. "You really need
to sleep to keep a healthy brain because it links electrical activity to a
practical housekeeping function."
So next time your hand is hovering over the
'next episode' button on Netflix late at night or you're pondering
tackling just one more work task before you hit the hay, take a moment to
remember this study and visualize all the garbage building up in your brain. If
you don't want it to stay their gunking up the works, it's time to turn off
that bedside lamp and prioritize sleep.
PUBLISHED
ON: NOV 10, 2019
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com
columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
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