
Sleep Flushes Toxins from the Brain - anishkothari
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24567412
======
tokenadult
Science Now, the news service affiliated with the journal Science, has a
write-up on this report,

[http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2013/10/sleep-
ulti...](http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2013/10/sleep-ultimate-
brainwasher)

and that links to the abstract

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373)

of the published study itself.

~~~
anishkothari
Thank you for these links, I wish the BBC article included them. Here's the
press release from the University of Rochester, where the study was conducted:

[http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=3956](http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=3956)

------
drewcrawford
This appears to have an interesting implication for FFI [1], a mysterious
genetic disease that causes complete insomnia in adults and results in death.
The final stage of FFI is dementia.

It turns out that the β-amyloids that are cleared during sleep according to
this paper, are associated with certain types of dementia in the general
population [2].

It also turns out that certain sleep disorders are dementia predictor [3].

This is just a laymen's speculation, but this is suggestive that dementia may
be a type of sleep disorder, that it could be caused by some interruption in
the process demonstrated in this paper.

And this is a stretch, but it is known that FFI is caused by a malformed prion
protein, which is a protein that is deeply involved in various neuron-related
functions. It seems possible that this protein is involved in the cleansing
process in some way. If so, that would be a HUGE deal, because abnormal prion
proteins are associated with a huge variety of neurodegenerative diseases.

Basically, I have high hopes for future research.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia)

[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17502554](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17502554)

[3]
[http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/781136](http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/781136)

~~~
srd
Is it known if there are ways to support the cleanup process?

I ask because due to allergies I have constant sinus congestions and as a
result a very light sleep. On average I wake up (to the point where I'm
consciously aware that I'm awake) 2 to 4 times per night, persumably due to
lack of oxygen.

I'm noticing memory issues; and while the process may not be reversable, I
would like to halt it or at least slow it down as much as possible.

~~~
dbbolton
My dad and I are in a similar situation to you- terrible nasal congestion
constantly interfering with sleep.

The quick and dirty solution is decongestants. However, vasoconstrictors
(pseudoephedrine, oxymetazoline, phenylepherine, etc.) often have a "rebound
effect", i.e. when they wear off you find you're actually more congested than
you were before you took the drug. In this sense they can be quite addictive.
I try not to use any unless it's absolutely necessary, and only once every few
days at that.

One thing that helps a little bit is Breathe Right nasal strips. They will
often open up the nasal passages enough that I no longer have to struggle to
breathe through my nose. If I'm only slightly congested, I use these. I don't
know if the increased air flow would be enough to keep you asleep or not, but
it's probably worth a try.

For the most part, I have pretty much adapted to function on a few hours'
worth of sleep. I can go on a three hour nap twice a day for an indefinite
length of time. I don't know if that is enough rest to fully clean up the
brain, but I don't feel crappy all the time so I suppose it's good enough. It
definitely works better for me than sleeping for 6 hours once a day. I
typically sleep in on the weekends, but I recently saw an article claiming
that isn't enough to erase slept debt accumulated during the week.

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Locke1689
Same old story, primitive stop-the-world GC ;)

~~~
fsckin
Have you tried the new polyphasic garbage collector?

~~~
Ygg2
It is very toxic.

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dbecker
_" The brain only has limited energy at its disposal and it appears that it
must choose between two different functional states - awake and aware or
asleep and cleaning up,"_

Sure sounds like part of the wake-sleep algorithm, which is impressive given
that the wake-sleep algorithm was named in the mid-90s.

~~~
dsrguru
> "The brain ... must choose between two different functional states - awake
> and aware or asleep and cleaning up"

As any lucid dreamer can tell you, there's also a third option--asleep and
aware.

~~~
nikatwork
Not to mention hypnagogic / sleep paralysis - mind awake, body asleep.

~~~
jotm
Except both of these are rare occurences that last a short while - it would
probably be very detrimental to have lucid dreams or sleep paralysis every
night for months/years.

~~~
nikatwork
Oh I find sleep paralysis very unrestful. The point is though, there are more
mental states than "awake/asleep".

And let me tell you, sleep paralysis is not always rare...

~~~
legitsource
I'm narcoleptic. Sleep paralysis happens pretty often to me and it still
causes me distress almost every time until I "boot up" enough to realize what
is going on.

Hypnagogic hallucinations (at least that I remember) are quite a bit rarer and
much more terrifying, since my brain pretty much dreams up the worst possible
scenarios possible (burning building, demons, reapers, Sasquatch, being dead
in a morgue drawer, and even evil leprechauns have made appearances).

~~~
nikatwork
Don't forget the alien strobe lights. Sorry now you are gonna see that too.

In all seriousness, wiggle your big toe. For some reason your fine motor
controls are probably still online, and it will break you out of the
hypnagogic state. Kill bill wasn't lying.

But... if you wanna real trip, try to remain calm, still and breathe deeply
through the hallucinations and keep in mind that nothing can hurt you (I like
to repeat the mantra, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself").

You will reach a state of blissful calm. Congratulations, you just achieved a
meditative state that people strive for years to reach. From there you can
have out of body experiences, transcendental meditation, etc. Seriously it's
some spooky business.

~~~
legitsource
For some odd reason, I don't really see flashing lights or anything
extraterrestrial. I don't know why.

And wiggling my toes or fingers doesn't seem to ever work for me, but my phone
buzzing or someone touching me breaks me out almost instantly.

As for the calm, "astral projecting" thing, I used to do some things like that
and really enjoyed it, until I ended up "seeing" some jackal-headed
monstrosity battling shadow people and something that looked like smoke with
diamond shaped blazing yellow eyes.

------
willstepp
Why does everyone in this thread want to get rid of sleep? I like sleeping,
and dreaming. 24-7 consciousness in the name of increased productivity sounds
like a nightmare, no pun intended.

~~~
Technophobe
How can you enjoy something you're not conscious of? What you likely enjoy is
the 5-30 minutes as you're falling asleep, and the 5-60 minutes as you're
waking up.

If we could get the actual sleeping time to 1 minute, but keep the rest the
same, surely that would be strictly better in terms of human utility.

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tannerc
Can anyone with better knowledge of such things explain why this has to occur
during sleep? Is there just too much going on during the day to dedicate
physical and mental resources to this type of cleaning?

~~~
jared314
> [Dr Nedergaard] told the BBC: "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."

~~~
XorNot
The question on everyone's mind now is, can you bypass that need?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I have a sneaking suspicion that would be like pumping oxygen directly into
the blood and then trying to hold your breath - even though you technically
don't need to breathe, millions of years of evolutionary tricks will make sure
you do. Try telling your brain that it does not need to sleep after 72 hours
just because you have cleared up the toxins

~~~
toomuchtodo
Actually, this would work. But O2 isn't the problem, the CO2 is. You'll need a
process to filter the CO2 out of your blood, as that's what causes your body's
breathing reflex to occur. If you could filter the CO2 from the blood stream,
while also providing O2, you would literally not need to breath.

"Intravenous Oxygen Injection For Patients Who Cannot Breathe"
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247295.php](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247295.php)

------
brickcap
Fascinating. An average 60 year old man sleeps for 20 years (considering a
normal 8 hr a day sleep) that is 1/3 of his life. A polar bear and some other
hibernating animals sleep for half of their lives. Amazingly polar bear is
cognizant enough to feed her baby while she is sleeping.

Sleep also lowers the heart beat. It is generally accepted that all mammals
have the same life span in number of hear beats. An elephant lives longer than
a mouse because it's heart beats slower. Could that mean that people who live
longer generally sleep more.

Whales are known to live for a long time. Wonder how much they sleep.

~~~
joshuahedlund
> It is generally accepted that all mammals have the same life span in number
> of heart beats.

Please note that while there is some correlation it may not be strict enough
to suggest that lowering your own heart rate will help you live longer.

[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5701/does-
every-...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5701/does-every-
species-get-around-a-billion-heartbeats-on-average)

------
batgaijin
I always wondered about how split-brain theory would work into this...

I mean there are stories of people with half their brain removed who are fully
functional (I think? I can't find a source atm).

I wonder what would happen if half your brain could be on/off and switch?

Also you'd think that any mutation optimizing for time awake would have
decimated the other creatures? I don't get how evolution has conquered
everything but sleep.

~~~
soneca
On that post about a bird that fly for 6 months in a row there were a
discussion about the sleep in animals. Some of them are able to sleep
alternating one half sleeping and the other aware of the environment. And
there is speculation if that bird could sleep while flying.

I think half brain awake is not enough to have a fully functional life. I also
heard about people losing part of their brain and adapting to deal with it.
But that doesn't mean a brain doesn't need that part. It is like the fallacy
of using only 10% of the brain. The brain is very well used and optmized for
performance, if you lose part of it, it would adapt to compensate what is
missing, but it will not be optimized anymore.

Disclosure: just guessing here, I have no scientific knowledge or background
at all to support these claims of mine.

~~~
dkersten
In the case of the bird, it may not need fully optimized brain to fly. So it
might be acceptable to have reduced brain performance as a tradeoff for longer
awakeness, especially if you could _recharge_ under reduced performance and
then go back to fully awake (and rested).

------
greenyoda
Wikipedia has a decent article on the glymphatic system, which clears waste
products from the brain:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system)

The brain and spinal cord have no lymphatic circulation, which handles waste
removal for the rest of the body.

------
Miyamoto
Awesome. One very (very very) small step closer to creating a pill to help the
flushing process so we may sleep less, or not at all.

~~~
jessriedel
Seems unlikely. Essentially _all_ animals with a brain sleep, even flies.
You'd need to find a pill that could do something that not one animal was able
to evolve to do over hundreds of millions of years. Something that was
extremely calorie intensive is all I can imagine.

~~~
wtvanhest
I appreciate your logic, but there is a wide variety of needed levels of sleep
among different animals, and even among different individual humans which
tells me that some are more efficient than others at sleeping (maybe clearing
toxins?).

As efficient as evolution is, the ability not to sleep as much may not be a
huge determinant in reproduction. Just 100 years ago, people worked all day,
then relaxed and slept. There was little to no demand for not sleeping at all
from a survival standpoint.

The main reason people want to stay awake all night now is to work more and
advance their careers. You don't need that for survival.

Further, Pharma companies have done some amazing things. While I agree that it
is unlikely soon, I am confident that if humans are around in 200 years, it
becomes much, much more likely.

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
What is likely to be true is the pharmaceuticals will allow a conscious choice
among a menu of tradeoffs, on a daily basis.

Such tradeoffs might be possible now, for those with sufficient discipline,
but switching between very different ones is too hard.

------
jimgardener
It would be nice if my computer did all scan/cleanup defrag ops after I shut
it down and go to sleep

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sillysaurus2
A "toxin" is something which is toxic to a system. But our knowledge of the
brain is so primitive that we can't reasonably claim to know which chemicals
are toxic at tiny, long-term dosage levels, unless it leads to death. There is
no evidence that it's possible to die directly from sleep deprivation.
Therefore this seems a dubious headline.

~~~
foobarbazqux
If you don't sleep for long enough (about 7 days), you'll start to have visual
and auditory hallucinations and also delusional thinking. You'll also
experience severely reduced effectiveness of just about every system in your
body. You might not die if you don't sleep for a year (say), but you'll
probably get permanent brain damage.

~~~
sillysaurus2
The point of science is to never fall back on claims like "you'll probably get
permanent brain damage" unless it's known what brain damage you may get, along
with bounds on a confidence interval. Otherwise we're just philosophizing.

~~~
foobarbazqux
Well, it's a testable hypothesis. We will probably never test it in humans or
higher mammals due to ethical concerns.

~~~
VladRussian2
may be we willn't as we already did. Google "sleep deprivation experiment".

------
TaiChiChaiTea
As someone in their early 20s with a sleep disorder this freaks me out!

------
hkon
Does it flush the toxins if you take sleeping pills?

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giardini
Any implications for napping?

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_-_-_-
When I hear "toxins", I think of a developer on a project I helped manage. He
was having health problems so he had to take a 1-1.5 month sabbatical to India
to be cleansed of toxins. If I remember correctly the end result was that he
quit.

While I do believe there that the body cleanses itself from toxins, and I
can't say for certain whether the developer that left us got his toxins
cleansed or not, this article and study smells of B.S.

The second tip off is the quoted doctor's name: Dr. Nedergaard

Scientists with Dutch/Scandinavian names always seem to produce the most crap
science on average in my experience. I have no idea why, but I've noticed it.
Especially when it comes to the "positive affects" of pot. I know that is an
over-generalization, but someone should do a study on that to see if it's
true. Preferably one without as many A's in his/her last name.

~~~
anotheraccount7
Well the trophy for most BS per capita definitely goes to the
Chinese.Unfortunately If I see a chinese name on an IEEE article and it's not
from a reputable university, I skip it.

As for clearing out toxins. It's been known for years that sleep clears free
radicals from the brain. That's why very long term sleep deprivation can led
to brain damage, and why if you take modafinil you aren't shielded from the
physiological adverse effects of sleep deprivations (though mentally you'll be
fine).

