Briefs · Frontier Science
Vibrating mattress helps clear Alzheimer’s protein from the brain
Your mattress may soon be doing more than helping you sleep. It may be taking out the brain’s rubbish.
Lying on a vibrating mattress for 40 minutes, combined with two pills that release nitric oxide into the body, enhanced the clearance of an Alzheimer’s-related protein via the brain’s waste-disposal system, the glymphatic system. The combination made the brain’s blood vessels swell and constrict more strongly, flushing the protein away.
It is one of several angles researchers are trying — ultrasound, pink noise and even intermittently inhaling high doses of carbon dioxide are in the mix — because, as Christopher Brown (University of Southampton) puts it, it is important to come at this from as many angles as possible to increase the chance of it translating to the clinic.
Conclusion: the brain is not an attic. It is a house that needs its bins taken out.
Read the original at New Scientist
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