How a Lack of Sleep Affects Our Health
Good sleep has long been known to help our body to rest and rejuvenate. In this post, we will look at how our body uses sleep to detoxify itself.
Everybody knows what even disturbed or insufficient sleep can mean after just one night. Try not to sleep for a few nights, let alone suffer from chronic sleep deprivation! Here are just some consequences of it:
- Lack of concentration
- Tiredness
- Becoming a danger to oneself and others when fulfilling tasks that require focus and concentration
- Inability to process information
- Learning and memory problems
- Lack of motivation
- Depression
- Chronic fatigue
- Development of chronic conditions
- Raised levels of stress and irritability
- Headaches/ migraines
- A slump in the immune response to infection
- A higher risk of developing life-threatening diseases – such as cancer.
The brain is one of the first organs to suffer from a lack of sleep. But why? Is there something that sleep does to the brain which keeps it functional? Recent research has discovered that sleep serves a very important function in terms of detoxifying the brain. Observations have shown that the brain’s toxin and waste-clearing system is at its peak during sleep.
“The conservation of sleep across all animal species suggests that sleep serves a vital function. We here report that sleep has a critical function in ensuring metabolic homeostasis. Using real-time assessments of tetramethylammonium diffusion and two-photon imaging in live mice, we show that natural sleep or anaesthesia is associated with a 60% increase in the interstitial space, resulting in a striking increase in the convective exchange of cerebrospinal fluid with interstitial fluid. In turn, convective fluxes of interstitial fluid increased the rate of β-amyloid clearance during sleep. Thus, the restorative function of sleep may be a consequence of the enhanced removal of potentially neurotoxic waste products that accumulate in the awake central nervous system. ” Source
Glymphatic System
The team of scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) writes about their findings in the online issue of Science. Draging Maiken Nedergaard, the lead researcher of URMC’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine, says:
“This study shows that the brain has different functional states when asleep and when awake. 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.”
Nedergaard’s team has named the system of clearing the brain “glymphatic system” – based on the fact that it acts like the lymphatic system, but is managed by the glial cells in the brain.
Scientists have known for a long time that cerebrospinal fluid played the main role in detoxifying the Central Nervous System and the brain. The newly discovered system works much faster, and under pressure, flushing every cell in the brain. The process is called convection.
“It’s as if the brain has two garbage haulers – a slow one that we’ve known about, and a fast one that we’ve just met,” said Nedergaard. “Given the high rate of metabolism in the brain and its exquisite sensitivity, it’s not surprising that its mechanisms to rid itself of waste are more specialized and extensive than previously realized.” Source
“The glymphatic [the term used in the article – GSG] system is like a layer of piping that surrounds the brain’s existing blood vessels. The team found that glial cells called astrocytes use projections known as “end feet” to form a network of conduits around the outsides of arteries and veins inside the brain – similar to the way a canopy of tree branches along a well-wooded street might create a sort of channel above the roadway.
Those end feet are filled with structures known as water channels or aquaporins, which move CSF through the brain. The team found that CSF is pumped into the brain along the channels that surround arteries, and then washes through brain tissue before collecting in channels around veins and draining from the brain. ” Source
“Understanding how the brain copes with waste is critical. In every organ, waste clearance is as basic an issue as how nutrients are delivered. In the brain, it’s an especially interesting subject, because in essentially all neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, protein waste accumulates and eventually suffocates and kills the neuronal network of the brain,” said Iliff.
“If the glymphatic system fails to cleanse the brain as it is meant to, either as a consequence of normal ageing or in response to brain injury, waste may begin to accumulate in the brain. This may be what is happening with amyloid deposits in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Iliff. “Perhaps increasing the activity of the glymphatic system might help prevent amyloid deposition from building up or could offer a new way to clean out build-ups of the material in established Alzheimer’s disease,” he added. ” Source
One of the waste products removed from the brain during sleep is beta-amyloid, the substance that forms sticky plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease. They increase during the time we are awake and decrease during sleep. This is just one example of toxic waste removed by the brain during sleep. There are many more.
So as we can see from this important research, sleep is not only needed to help rewire our brain and help process information. It plays a very important physiological role – detoxification of the brain, making sure that the garbage which accumulates during the hours of wakefulness gets cleared away, which ensures that our brain continues to function and serve us well into old age.
Natural Ways to Help Us Sleep Better
There are simple ways that can help to improve our sleep. This is what you could do to help you sleep better:
- Go to bed at the same time and early enough to have at least 8 hours of sleep
- Keep the bedroom well-aired and cool
- Keep electronic devices and TV out of the bedroom
- Don’t use electronic devices for at least 2 hours before bedtime
- Avoid heavy conversations and thoughts about difficult subjects. Problem-solving works much better in the morning.
- Meditate before bedtime – YouTube is full of relaxing music and guided meditations for better sleep.
- Have the last meal at least 3 hours before bedtime
- Don’t eat heavy meals in the evening.
- A light snack if you feel hungry could be a pot of yogurt, a piece of toast with honey, or a piece of fruit.
- Breathing exercises calm the mind.
- Take a cup of calming tea – peppermint and chamomile are very soothing
- A bath with Epsom salt and some lavender oil
- Light-blocking curtains in the bedroom or a sleep mask as an alternative.
The Remedies I Use
- Hemp seed oil – drop s few under your tongue
- Apply magnesium oil to the body, especially the shoulders, neck, back of the head and stomach – it acts within minutes
- Valerian-based remedies
- Glycine – an amino acid that is calming and sleep-inducing
- Ashwagandha – it balances the hormones and calms down the mind
- Melatonin – is not sold in every country, so I get mine from the US.
Want to learn more about natural detoxifying remedies?
Take a look at my books where I describe how minerals – salts, mud and clays – help us detoxify and heal. In these books, I describe natural remedies of non-plant origin – mud, salts, clays, zeolite and diatomaceous earth – and their wonderful toxin-binding and removing properties.
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