Sleeping is not only essential and feels great, it also helps detox the brain, flushing out toxins through a remarkable plumbing system, a new study found.
Research published Thursday in the journal Science found that during sleep the glymphatic system washes away harmful proteins, including amyloid beta, which has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.
The system uses cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) to basically cleanse the brain and sends the waste through the circulatory system before it finds its way in the liver. The CSF moves through spaces around brain cells, an area that increases by 60 percent during sleep, making it easier to clean.
Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center said, "We have a cleaning system that almost stops when we are awake and starts when we sleep. It's almost like opening and closing a faucet -- it's that dramatic."
"This study shows that the brain has different functional states when asleep and when awake," Nedergaard added. "In fact, the restorative nature of sleep appears to be the result of the active clearance of the by-products of neural activity that accumulate during wakefulness."
The study said the glymphatic system was almost 10 times more active during sleep than when awake, making shut-eye the best time for the body to cleanse itself.
Dr Nedergaard said this was a "vital" function for staying alive, but did not appear to be possible while the mind was awake.
"This is purely speculation, but it looks like the brain is losing a lot of energy when pumping water across the brain and that is probably incompatible with processing information," she said, according to the BBC.
