A new study reaffirms the importance of getting a good night's sleep by encouraging people to sleep deeply throughout the night. By studying the brain activity and behavior of fruit flies, they discovered that deep sleep has an ancient, restorative power. This allows the “waste” from the brain to be removed naturally. This may contain toxic proteins that can...neurodegenerative diseasescan lead.
Promote healthy deep sleep
Waste elimination could be important for maintaining brain health or preventing neurodegenerative diseases, according to the study authors. This can occur during wakefulness and sleep, but is significantly enhanced during deep sleep. Fruit flies appear to be very different from humans. However, the neurons that control their sleep-wake cycles are strikingly similar to human ones. For this reason, fruit flies have become a well-studied model organism for sleep, circadian rhythms, and neurodegenerative diseases. In the current study, the research team examined Proboscis Extension Sleep (PES). This is a deep sleep stage in fruit flies that is similar to deep, slow sleep in humans. The researchers discovered that during this stage, fruit flies repeatedly extend and retract their proboscis. This potentially moves fluids to the fly version of the kidneys. The study shows that this facilitates waste elimination and aids in the healing of injuries.
When the scientists disrupted the flies' deep sleep, the insects were less able to clear an injected, non-metabolizable dye from their systems. Additionally, the flies were more susceptible to traumatic injuries. These study results bring researchers closer to understanding why all organisms should promote deep sleep. All animals, especially those in the wild, are incredibly vulnerable when they sleep. However, research increasingly shows that the benefits of sleep, including crucial waste elimination, outweigh this increased vulnerability. The finding that deep sleep plays a role in waste elimination in the fruit fly shows that this is an evolutionarily conserved core function of sleep.These research resultssuggest that waste elimination may have been a function of sleep in the common ancestors of flies and humans.
