As I wrote in an earlier post on deep restorative sleep (DRS), https://judsonsomerville.com/sleep/. To give a brief refresher, remember as a kid being awoken from a DEEP sleep? How you took a few moments to orient?
I believe that is because your brain was partially or completely contracted and once awoken was expanding to work properly. Notice that you no longer experience that, confusion when being awoken anymore and you’re a “light” sleeper.
In other word’s your probably one who doesn’t obtain DRS. To obtain this requires the body to be what I described in the past as: paralyzed except for breathing, but in fact is more like adequate muscle tone. Without this muscle tone during sleep our sleep can be interrupted. Interrupted what appears to be either by our muscles trying to act out the thoughts in our brain.
So we either develop periodic limb movement of sleep (which I casually refer to as restless leg syndrome but technically is not) and/or snoring leading to sleep apnea. Both periodic limb movement of sleep(PLMS) or sleep apnea (SA) can jar us out of and/or prevent us from obtaining adequate DRS.
Causing strong enough movements and/or cessation of breathing. This especially true with sub optimal blood levels of vitamin D3 as both can and often do occur. Sometimes to a degree to awaken us, which almost all who experience this attribute to the “I must urinate” excuse.
Or awaken to a lesser degree such that we are not fully conscious. Either way both aware or not our DRS is disrupted. Preventing the time needed for our brains to fully contract to fully open the glymphatic drainage system (GDS).
Either optimal blood levels of vitamin D3 or regular and at least moderate exercise. That adequate DRS occurs in the later despite sub optimal blood levels of vitamin D has been curious to me. DRS is required for GDS to function, more on GDS in a bit.
I believe the ability to obtain DRS with moderate exercise, despite sub-optimal blood levels of vitamin D3, is due to the exercise released endorphins and enkephalins. This may or may not be the cause, other factors may be the reason or a combination of both, I am just not sure how.
I have been and am researching it and it will be a future blog post. The point being for this series of blog posts is in both cases most acquire adequate DRS to allow the brain to contract. So, when the person is either exercising both moderately and regularly or with optimal blood levels of vitamin D3, ideally both, the brain during DRS has adequate time to fully contract. Thus, allowing the GDS to function properly.
Properly in that when we obtain adequate uninterrupted DRS this allows the brain to fully contract opening the GDS to flush out the waste. The GDS is how the brain appears to dispose of larger waste products like proteins. Without this “cleaning” of the waste, that is the tau, other proteins and waste, they accumulate in the brain.
Thus, it is both adequate DRS and the GDS functioning properly that are the keys to preventing these proteinopathies type diseases. As loss of DRS does not allow the nerves “shut down” so they continue to produce these proteins. Further contributing to the problem.
With time inadequate DRS resulting in nonfunctioning GDS eventually results in a critical amount of “waste” to accumulate. In the case of Alzheimer’s excess tau and beta-amyloid proteins, accumulate interfering with the brains normal function.
In researching these blog posts on Alzheimer’s disease, I came across a comment on the Holth article. 1 This was on the Alzforum where Veasey noted, these waste proteins, tau and beta-amyloid, accumulate in high metabolic rate areas of the brain. 2
This commenter, Veasey also wrote the following: “Perhaps the most tantalizing point is that in rested conditions human tau shows little variance among participants, but in response to sleep loss the error bars expand, suggesting tau increases far more in some humans acutely in response to sleep loss than others. Are those humans more predisposed to developing a tauopathy, including Alzheimer’s? Only time will tell.”2 This made me think.
- Holth JK, Fritschi SK, Wang C, et al. (2019 Feb) The sleep-wake cycle regulates brain interstitial fluid tau in mice and CSF tau in humans. Science. 22;363(6429):880-884.
- Veasey S. University of Pennsylvania. https://www.alzforum.org/papers/sleep-wake-cycle-regulates-brain-interstitial-fluid-tau-mice-and-csf-tau-humans
*The information posted above is for educational purposes only. Always check with your doctor before initiating any changes in your medical treatment. If you do not, then The Two-Minute Health Fact, Dr. Judson Somerville, nor The Optimal Dose is responsible!
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