It’s Time to Take Out the Brain Trash [And Slash Alzheimer’s]
In recent years, we’ve learned that an underlying cause of Alzheimer’s is a buildup of toxic trash in the brain.
As the gunk builds up, it slows the gears and interferes with communication between brain cells.
Your brain has a built-in trash removal system that’s supposed to regularly remove these toxins. But in people with Alzheimer’s and other brain-related problems, this clean-out system stops working correctly.
Fortunately, by boosting your brain’s trash-removal system, you can get these toxins out of your brain.
Your brain’s glymphatic system collects damaged proteins (like beta-amyloid and tau), neurotoxins, and other metabolic waste products and deposits them into the lymphatic ducts in your neck. From there they get transferred to your kidneys and liver for elimination.
In Alzheimer’s, this system breaks down.
But in a fascinating mouse study, researchers injected a tracer into the mice’s cerebrospinal fluid and tracked it as it moved through the glymphatic system.
Following this tracker, they saw that the channels that are supposed to drain the toxins became misplaced (like a trash chute that somehow got disconnected), which caused the toxins to build up instead of getting washed out.
The culprit behind these “disconnected pipes” was the overactivity of a protein called PERK. Fortunately, inhibiting this protein led to three significant benefits:
- The trash chute was “reattached”
- Toxins like amyloid beta plaque and tau were flushed out
- Cognitive performance was improved
“Perk inhibitor” drugs are already in clinical trials for other diseases, but we’d have to wait YEARS for them to go through testing for Alzheimer’s.
Fortunately, research has already discovered a drug-free solution to boost the glymphatic system that you can activate starting TONIGHT…
Sleep.
It turns out that the glymphatic system is ONLY turned on during sleep… and it’s most active during the deepest sleep stages.
Research shows that not spending enough time in the two deep stages of sleep leads to cognitive deterioration and increased risk of Alzheimer’s. Its effect on your glymphatic system is likely a big reason why.
In addition to quality sleep, there are several other ways to ensure your glymphatic system is firing on all cylinders. Subscribers can check out my May 2025 newsletter by clicking here.
P.S. Is this bad habit shrinking your brain?!
View Sources
Chen, K., Morizawa, Y. M., Nuriel, T., Al-Dalahmah, O., Xie, Z., & Yang, G. (2025). Selective removal of astrocytic PERK protects against glymphatic impairment and decreases toxic aggregation of β-amyloid and tau. Neuron. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2025.04.027
