Most people with a basic knowledge of nutrition and most doctors now have only positive things to say about detoxing the body to remove toxins that build up over time. In some cases people report almost remarkable recoveries from illness from detoxing and changing the diet that they eat. Even unintentional detoxing like when you cut out a certain type of food from your diet can have this type of effect. Often at first you feel a little worse almost like a withdrawal from a drug as your body clears out the build up of sugar, fat or impurities from your cells, blood and digestive system.
What about your brain though?
It’s true of course that a body detox will have a similar effect on the cells and blood flow in our brain.
In the body the job of detoxing on a daily basis is partly handled by organs like the liver, kidneys and intestines. When those organs are overwhelmed by too many chemicals or too much fat or sugar as examples.., physical health starts to suffer.
The brain though has it’s own detox system that is enabled by cerebral spinal fluid movement during sleep.
And here is more research showing that deep slow wave sleep promotes Cerebral spinal fluid to circulate through the brain removing toxins and plaques.
I wrote about this is the description of the two roXiva programs called BRAIN-DETOX and BRAIN-FOOD that are designed to use this knowledge and more to maximise the potential of brain health based on sleep cycles and brainwave activity.
This time they actually filmed the effect and found that the fluid is pulsed in oscillations just like the brainwaves themselves.
Quote from the research: “Slow oscillatory neuronal activity thus leads to oscillations in blood volume, drawing cerebrospinal fluid into and out of the brain.”
Again this shows the importance of both sleep itself and the deep slow wave brain activity associated with this non REM sleep (Typically Delta wave sleep).
And it’s no surprise to me or science that people who have age related issues with memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer’s also struggle to sleep properly. Properly in this case being defined as repeated cycles of mid to light sleep REM, and deep sleep non REM phases.
Research showing this can be enhanced by external stimulation is starting to appear (see article called Boost your immunity and supercharge your sleep…) and testimonials of audio visual entrainment users would suggest it is effective in promoting deep restorative sleep with the associated slow wave brain activity.
Very cool to see.