Silent Strokes & Small Brain Lesions

A study done at Germany’s Dresden University Stroke Center showed that patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may experience an increased risk for silent stroke and small white matter lesions in the brain. Severe OSA patients experience pauses in breathing more that 30 times per hour on average and the length of time of the pauses is 10 seconds …

Alzheimer’s Brain Plaques

Does the brain clean Alzheimer’s plaques out while you sleep??  Does sleep deprivation prevent the brain from cleaning these plaques out? Sleep may be called the “clean cycle” for the brain to clean out sticky proteins called amyloid-beta protein fragments that can stick together in the brain.  These plaques are present as a hallmark in Alzheimer’s disease which is the most …

Sleep Cleans Trash From Your Brain

Scientists have found a system in the brain that flushes out waste products from the brain.  And they further found that this system is mostly active when you are sleeping.  This information is found in a study published in the journal, Science. Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Center for Translational Neuromedicine said, “In …

Nose Breathing May Benefit the Brain

Lately more experiments have looked at how breathing influences our cognition, especially memory.  The Journal of Neuroscience published a study in October, 2018 that looked at the relationship between our memory and our method of breathing—through the nose or through the mouth. Many studies show that as rodents sniff anything including odorless air it starts activity in the brain by …