Hi there. It's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast. Today we're exploring something that

bridges the fascinating and the fantastical, but remains grounded in rigorous science. The question,

can a new class of sleeping pills potentially help lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease?

It's a question that has researchers cautiously curious, though I must emphasize the word

cautiously. Let me paint you a picture that fundamentally changed how we understand sleep's

purpose. Imagine your brain as a bustling metropolis that

desperately needs sanitation services each night. During deep sleep, something remarkable happens.

A biological cleaning crew sweeps through your brain, washing away the metabolic detritus that accumulates during

waking hours. Scientists have discovered what we call the glymphatic system, a nightly waste

clearance process. That becomes dramatically more active during sleep. The spaces between brain cells expand by approximately

60% during sleep, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flush out toxins with remarkable efficiency,

among the cellular garbage being removed, are proteins called amyloid beta and tau protein, which are intimately

connected to Alzheimer's disease. Most remarkably, amyloid beta clearance doubles during deep sleep

compared to wakefulness. This represents Mother Nature's sophisticated pressure washing system for your brain,

operating primarily during the deepest stages of non-R-E-M sleep.

Now consider the consequences of sleep deprivation, starve the brain of its nightly cleaning,

and toxic waste accumulates.

Studies demonstrate that even a single sleepless night triggers a measurable spike

in these pathological proteins. In laboratory mice, sleep deprivation nearly doubles tau

protein levels in brain tissue. In humans, one night without sleep increases

tau protein concentrations in cerebrospinal fluid by 50%. Sleep loss also elevates amyloid beta levels,

promoting the formation of amyloid plaques between neurons. These represent causal,

...