Study: Sleep 'Cleans' Your Brain

Sleepyheads, ftw. According to a new study published in the Science this week, our brains utilize sleep time to “remove waste products,” that build up while we’re awake. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center studying the brains of mice found that a waste-draining process, called the “glymphatic system,” is ten times more active during sleep. The nocturnal cleaning system is crucial to our health, ridding our brains of toxins that can eventually lead to conditions like Alzheimer’s. “It’s almost like opening and closing a faucet—it’s that dramatic,” says Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, one of the leading scientists on the study.