Sleep: Post #3--Brain Waste Clearance

Brain Waste Clearance: The brain is surrounded by a large supply of Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF)—blood dumps waste into the CSF. A specialized plumbing system is at work in the brain. CSF gets pumped down into the brain alongside the blood vessels. It’s an elegant and clever design due to the confined size of the skull and compactness of the brain—it replaces the lymphatic system. NO other organ uses this system

Sleep: Post #2--Nutrients and Waste

Circulatory System solves the nutrient supply issue—gets nutrients and oxygen to every cell in our body. The lymphatic system (a parallel system) solves the waste-removal problem from our cellular activity. However, lymphatic vessels are not in the brain.

Sleep: Post #1--Brain Nutrients and Waste

The Importance of Sleep
One more reason to get a good night’s sleep. ~Jeff Iliff (2014 TED Talk) Summary

Brain Nutrients and Waste--Sleep is an elegant design to solve one of  two problems that every organ in the body has to solve: 1) How to get nutrients to the organ and 2) How to get waste away from the organ. These are especially important tasks for the brain, which is only 2%of our body mass but uses 25% of its energy.