This is the sixteenth chapter.
Start at the beginning or read the previous chapter.
Copyright © 2017 by Christian Bergman, All rights reserved.
All people, places, and events are fictional … except when they aren’t.
The Nudist War – Day 56
In the long run, we are all dead.
~ John Maynard Keynes, 1923
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Sleep. Sweet delicious sleep. Warm, safe, clarity regenerating sleep. In 2013, researchers determined that sleep is critical for flushing neurotoxins and other metabolic waste from the brain and spinal column. These toxins accumulate during the day as a result of normal brain and neurological processes. If not flushed away every night they begin to poison the brain, inhibiting clear thought, reasoning, and memory. This more than anything else explains the importance and the necessity of getting a quality night’s sleep.
The new and amazing part of this was the discovery that nerves, the spinal column, and the brain shrink in size during sleep and re-expand during wakefulness. It is this expansion and contraction cycle of wake and sleep that flushes the cerebrospinal fluid through the brain and spine, carrying away toxins and metabolic waste. Anyone who has been awake over twenty-four hours doesn’t need the results of clinical studies to know that sleep is necessary for clear thinking.
Contrafactual 