“Your Internal Organs Itch”: 58 Facts About The Human Body That Might Keep You Up At Night

One of the coolest biology-related things we’ve learned in recent years is that your brain gets ‘washed’ to flush out waste while you sleep. In a nutshell, based on research conducted by scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, nerve cells coordinate to produce rhythmic waves, which then propel fluid through dense brain tissue, washing it.

“These neurons are miniature pumps. Synchronized neural activity powers fluid flow and removal of debris from the brain,” says the study’s first author, Li-Feng Jiang-Xie, PhD.

“If we can build on this process, there is the possibility of delaying or even preventing neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, in which excess waste—such as metabolic waste and junk proteins—accumulate in the brain and lead to neurodegeneration.”

Meanwhile, the senior author on the paper, Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, stresses that it is “critical” for the brain to dispose of metabolic waste build-up.

“We knew that sleep is a time when the brain initiates a cleaning process to flush out waste and toxins it accumulates during wakefulness. But we didn’t know how that happens. These findings might be able to point us toward strategies and potential therapies to speed up the removal of damaging waste and to remove it before it can lead to dire consequences,” Kipnis said.

What do you think, Pandas? Which of these facts impressed you the most? Which ones did you find the creepiest and why? Were there any that you already knew? What’s the most bizarre and impressive biology fact you know that wasn’t mentioned here?

Share your thoughts with all the other readers (and us!) in the comments at the bottom of this post.