There are lots of good reasons to try and follow a healthier diet.

You lose weight, you feel good, but the main reason, to live a longer, happier, more productive life.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

Today we look at how the brain's detox mechanism works,

the lymphatic system and more importantly what we can do to make it work even better.

The Glimphatic system is a newly discovered drainage system in the brain that clears the brain of toxic waste byproducts.

Sleep is a great mystery. A treat shared across animal species, sleep must be of vital importance to survive natural

selection pressures to eliminate such a vulnerable state. Indeed, cringe-worthy experiments have shown that keeping animals awake long enough can be fatal within 11 to 32 days.

It turns out sleep is of the brain, by the brain, and for the brain.

One function of sleep that has been elucidated in recent years is the clearance of

toxic waste byproducts through a newly discovered drainage system in the brain.

With the invention of the encephalogram EEG, to measure brain wave activity,

the scientific world was quickly disabused of the notion that sleep was a time of rest for the brain during certain stages of sleep.

There was brain-wide activity going on, but what was the brain actively doing?

More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle proposed that sleep helps the body clean the blood.

Well, today, we know sleep may help the body clean the brain.

Until 2012, we thought that the brain was singular among organs for recycling nearly all

of its own waste.

It had to since it was separated from the rest of the body

by the blood-brain barrier. But the barrier that keeps toxins out of the brain presumably

keeps toxins in. Then in 2012 a brain-wide fluid transport

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