HEALTH: Sleep Protects the Brain against Alzheimer's by Washing It

News Staff - Dr. Ananya Mandal, MD : Nov 5, 2019
News Medical-Net via Amazing Health Advances

"...that's when we discovered that during sleep, there are these really large, slow waves occurring maybe once every 20 seconds of CSF washing into the brain ... It's already known that people with Alzheimer's disease have less of these electrophysiological slow waves, so they have smaller and fewer slow waves." -Laura Lewis, Boston University

[Amazing Health Advances] Researchers have found that when in deep sleep, the brain waves within can start off a cleaning system within the brain that can protect it against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative brain diseases. The study titled, "Coupled electrophysiological, hemodynamic, and cerebrospinal fluid oscillations in human sleep," was published this week in the latest issue of the journal Science. (Image: Pixabay)

Researchers explained that there are several forms of brain waves especially slow ones that appear during the sleep and have been recorded using EEG (Electroencephalogram). The authors wrote, "Sleep is essential for both cognition and maintenance of healthy brain function. Slow waves in neural activity contribute to memory consolidation, whereas cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) clears metabolic waste products from the brain. Whether these two processes are related is not known."

The new study reveals that before each of the slow waves occur in the sleeping brain there is a pulse of CSF that washes all over the brain to remove the toxins from it. This means that approximately every 20 seconds or so, the brain gets a wash down. CSF normally is the fluid flowing around the brain and spinal cord.

Laura Lewis, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Boston University said that this study reveals the link between sleep deprivation and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. She said, "Some disruption to the way sleep is working could potentially be contributing to the decline in brain health"... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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