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                      Your Sleep Posture Helps Fight Brain Disease

                      Published by Dr. Mark Rosenberg

                      Painful woman awakening and feeling back pain

                      Like most of us, when you go to sleep at night, you just want to hit the pillow and stay there until the alarm clock rings the next morning.  But, there’s some new research that says how you sleep at night could lower your risk for getting certain brain diseases associated with getting older.  Let me tell you about this 1 simple thing you can do to protect your future brain health.

                      Keep Your Brain Healthy:  Change Your Sleep Position

                      How do you sleep at night? Even though I hope that you get a good night’s sleep, what I really mean is what position do you sleep in? Are you a back sleeper? A stomach sleeper? Or do you sleep on either of your sides?

                      In the past, not much was known about what the consequences of your sleep position was.  It was generally thought that it was just important to get a good night’s sleep period, no matter what position you achieved it in.

                      Man sleeping poses. Night sleep pose, asleep male positioning on bed and sleep position isolated vector illustration

                      But now, things have changed.  Researchers out of Stony Brook University in New York have learned something amazing about why sleeping on your side may be more beneficial, especially as you get older.

                      You may not realize this, but when you go to sleep at night, your mind may be off in dreamland, but your physical body opens up its clean and repair shop.  Sleep is a time when your body cleans itself of toxins incurred during the day.  It’s also a time when it attempts to heal itself on the cellular level.  Every major organ system, tissue, cell of your body undergoes a pretty miraculous transformation.

                      Sleep is when your body tries to heal any injury you may have from pulled muscles, wounds, broken bones, infections, etc.  It also is a time when it just performs routine maintenance so that your DNA can continue to replicate normally.  Other than just making you feel and look better the next day, physical healing is the real reason you need to get a good night’s sleep.

                      Your brain is a big part of that nightly repair system.  During sleep, your brain actually bathes itself in fluids from both your lymphatic system and your cerebrospinal fluids.  Doing this helps float away dangerous toxins that you were exposed to during the day.  Research shows that Parkinson’s disease can develop from chronic exposure to toxins, both environmental and personal (smoking, using aerosolized chemicals, recreational drugs, alcohol, etc).

                      This brain bathing procedure also helps prevents the buildup of tau proteins that are associated with the development of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative neurologic diseases.  Your other major organs go through a similar procedure using your lymphatic system to cleanse toxic wastes from them as well.

                      Until recently, though, it was unknown how much your sleep position facilitated your brain’s nightly cleaning process.  But, using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanning of the brain during sleep revealed how sleeping in the side position actually sped up and increased the brain bathing procedure.

                      ThinkstockPhotos-524723403

                      The MRI documented the onset of when cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) started to filter through the brain and when it exchanged with the brain’s internal fluids (ISF).  It was noted that in the side sleep position, the exchange filtration rates between these 2 types of fluids was greatest.

                      So, what about people who sleep on their back or stomachs?  Are they doomed to develop neurologic disease in the future?

                      Well, interestingly, the side sleeping position has been documented to be the most common in both humans and animals.  Perhaps this is a preference that Nature programmed into most of us to help keep our brain healthy.  The rate and amount of brain fluid bathing that takes place, as seen on the Stony Brook MRI documentation, seems to point in this direction.

                      Perhaps more studies, correlating people who primarily slept on their backs or stomachs with the onset of brain disease, would add more information about how to lower your risk.  The Stony Brook researchers hope that their findings may also add another treatment tool to those already diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, et al.

                      Training brain disease patients to sleep on their side may offer new hope.  The researchers further back this idea with the fact that many cases of dementia are associated with sleep disturbances, including just falling asleep in general.  Sleep disturbances have also been shown to speed up memory loss in already diagnosed Alzheimer patients.

                      What if preventing brain disease were as simple as sleeping on your side every night? Would you be willing to adopt a side sleep position if it meant lowering your risk of brain disease as you got older? I don’t know about you, but for me, changing my sleep position seems like a pretty small, simple thing I could do that could yield big brain health benefits.

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                      Dr. Mark Rosenberg
                      Dr. Mark Rosenberg
                      Dr. Mark Rosenberg received his doctorate from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1988 and has been involved with drug research since 1991. With numerous certifications in several different fields of medicine, psychology, healthy aging and fitness, Dr. Rosenberg has a wide breadth of experience in both the public and private sector with particular expertise in both the mechanism of cancer treatment failure and in treating obesity. He currently is researching new compounds to treat cancer and obesity, including receiving approval status for an investigational new drug that works with chemotherapy and a patent pending for an oral appetite suppressant. He is currently President of the Institute for Healthy Aging, Program Director of the Integrative Cancer Fellowship, and Chief Medical Officer of Rose Pharmaceuticals. His work has been published in various trade and academic journals. In addition to his many medical certifications, he also personally committed to physical fitness and is a certified physical fitness trainer.

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                      This website is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. FoodTrients – A Recipe for Aging Beautifully Grace O, author and creator of FoodTrients® -- a philosophy, a cookbook and a resource -- has a new cookbook dedicated to age-defying and delicious recipes, The Age Beautifully Cookbook: Easy and Exotic Longevity Secrets from Around the World, which provides one hundred-plus recipes that promote health and well-being. The recipes are built on foundations of modern scientific research and ancient knowledge of medicinal herbs and natural ingredients from around the world. Since the publication of her first anti-aging book, The Age GRACEfully Cookbook, Grace O has identified eight categories of FoodTrients benefits (Anti-inflammatory, Antioxidant, Immune Booster, Disease Prevention, Beauty, Strength, Mind, and Weight Loss) that are essential to fighting aging, which show how specific foods, herbs, and spices in the recipes help keep skin looking younger, prevent the diseases of aging, and increase energy and vitality. Grace O combines more exotic ingredients that add age-fighting benefits to familiar recipe favorites.

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