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Sleeping On Your Back Vs Side: Which Is Better?
Sleeping position is a choice between aging your face or keeping your brain young
Does it matter whether you sleep on the back or on your side?
It turns out it does.
The right sleep position can relieve stress, improve your health, slow aging, and make your brain work better. And given that we spend a third of our lives asleep, it’s important to maintain a sleep position that helps you reap the full benefits of sleep.
There’re different sleep positions and their accompanying benefits and risks. But when it comes to whether to sleep on your back or side, the choice isn’t easy — it’s one between keeping aging away or risking Alzheimer’s.
Cleaning of Junks From The Brain And Risk of Alzheimer’s
Your sleep position determines how effectively and efficiently your brain cleanses and repairs itself.
The brain needs to clean out junks or toxins that build up during waking hours. These are purely chemical wastes that if left in the brain will undermine its ability to function, increasing the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other neurological diseases.
What happens is that while you’re asleep, the cells in the brain open up, allowing the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) — which usually covers the surface of the brain during the day — to flow through the brain and wash away the toxins. The CSF flows through a kind of plumbing system called the glymphatic system, which appears to work 10 times better during sleep.
The question has always been which sleep position makes it more efficient for the brain to go through this “un-junking” process?
To answer that question, researchers at Stony Brook University carried out a study that used dynamic contrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brain’s glymphatic pathway.
They found that sleeping on your side as opposed to the back may be more effective when it comes to removing accumulated brain wastes. In addition, they also found that the side position helps reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other brain diseases.
