The brain possesses a waste removal system, termed the glymphatic system, composed of glial cells, responsible for clearing metabolic waste products.

“Glymphatic System, Brain & Sleep”

“I do like the idea of sleep. You may know your, you would know this better than me, but your spinal fluid and such, you know, expands and contracts. The idea of emptying out the garbage, so to speak.”

“But during sleep, we know that there's this so-called glimpmphatic clearance. the the clearance of junk from uh all the tissues but in particular from the brain uh that's facilitated by the ga hence glimp fatic”

“the brain actually has a sewage system inside of it now your body has one that you're all familiar with called the lymphatic system but it turns out the brain has one it's called the glymphatic system named after the cells in the brain that formed this system called the glial cells also known by sort of from a greek derivative meaning glue so they used to be just thought as the sort of the cells sort of irrelevant stuff between the neurons exactly you know yeah it was like junk DNA and of course what we always learn is that mother nature is far too efficient to leave inefficiency on the table like glue or junk and it turns out they form this sanitization system within the brain and what happens they discovered is that when you go into deep sleep at night this sewage system kicks into high gear and essentially those glial cells which surround the brain cells themselves the neurons proper they shrink in size by up to two hundred percent and then all of a sudden it leaves a vast amount of room for cerebrospinal fluid to start perfusing the brain and washing out that to try the metabolic detritus of wakefulness”

“what they discovered is that the brain actually has a sewage system inside of it now your body has one that you're all familiar with called the lymphatic system but it turns out the brain has one it's called the glymphatic system”

“I know the glymphatic system is, like, one of the major ways the brain clears amyloid beta plaques. Like you said, among other gunk and things.”

“the body has a waste sewage system called the lymphatic system. But the brain doesn't have its own lymphatic system. The lymphatic system does not penetrate the brain. So where does all of the garbage, the metabolic garbage go that your brain cells produce? Where is the sewage system for the brain? And she discovered it. It's actually made up of a set of cells called glial cells, which are these supporting brain cells. And so she called it the glymphatic system rather than the lymphatic system.”