It’s 2014! Whoop, whoop! Another year and another entry to the faithful blog. You thought I’d forgotten all about it. Well, I haven’t thanks to my dust-free brain.
A bit of good old shut-eye has been said to do many things including cleaning up. ‘Cleaning up?’, I hear you say. Yes just like a mop and a bucket. Well OK not quite exactly. The cleaning up involves a fluid cleaning away toxins.
I’m not making this up, it comes from a study by researchers from the University of Rochester and New York University who conducted an experiment on mice. They found that during sleep brain cells shrink allowing interstitial fluid to remove toxins including amyloid beta protein which builds up in sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease.
The glymphatic system which carries waste out of the brain was found to be ten times more active during sleep. There’s the perfect reason for some extra snooze time – you can say you’re cleaning.
According to the researcher Dr Maiken Nedergaard there are two states of the brain awake and aware, or asleep and cleaning up. I’d like to know where daydreamers fall into his definition. Are daydreamers kind of cleaning up?
Before you start dropping this fun fact into your next chat further research is to be conducted in humans to confirm that sleep is as good as a bit of detergent on mould.
Rest well reader. x
story tale anecdote 