what is physiologically happening when my brain feels “heavy” at the end of a long, busy work day?
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Your body has special vessels in it similar to blood vessels that are called lymphatics. A fun fact is that your blood vessels leak fluid and *stuff* out into the tissues all day, but they do an ok job of reabsorbing it but not 100%, so approx 20L of blood gets pumped from your heart to the tissues each day, but only 17L of blood gets returned to the heart by your veins. Well how does the body collect that extra fluid and *stuff* and get it back to the heart? Lymphatic vessels. Well when these vessels suck up leaked fluid and stuff, they also suck up any surrounding free waste products, or damaged tissue and *stuff* in the tissue. Well your brain has special lymphatics that are different and not considered apart of the lymphatic system, and they are creatively named “glymphatics”. Weirdly, scientists have discovered the g-vessels only work when the body is asleep, and there still not 100% certain why, as the discovery of glymphatics is a very recent finding so I personally don’t know much more to talk about the topic but pretty much these glymphatics only work when you’re sleeping, and therefore after a long day of being awake and thinking , your brain is gonna produce a lot of waste products, tissue damage and *stuff*, not to mention all that extra leaky fluid, which all of which hasn’t been able to be sucked up while you’re awake, hence leaving your head feeling heavy at the end of the day
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