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Staying Awake Forever

Sleep Research or Why Narcoleptics Shouldn't Drive in the Carpool

Until recently, we've had a limited understanding of why we sleep. One site states that "... many theories have been proposed, including a famous suggestion by the Nobel Prize winner, Francis Crick, that the purpose of sleep is to allow the brain to 'take out the trash' -- to deprogram the miscellaneous events that are not to be stored for long-term memory. Recent studies with animals in our laboratory suggest that he may be right, at least at a molecular level. "

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with sleep. You've got to love those intricate, crazy dreams that we all occasionally have but then again there's just no time to do what we really want to do! A full day of work, driving around the sprawling suburbs of most big American cities, and taking care of the mundane parts of life leave you with a deficit of at least and entire day per week! As much as I hate to admit it, I know that despite all the Mountain Dew, Red Bull, or even Bawls in the world, I'm ultimately going to crash.

A story that I've recently found compelling is a true case of scientific serendipity. One group of researchers working under the assumption that there was a genetic cause for narcolepsy found himself genetically modifying a group of Dobermans. The result indicated that a modification in a particular part of dog "chromosome 6 where the putative narcolepsy gene must reside".

In a completely different laboratory, while studying various causes of obesity, yet another researcher stumbled upon the signature of a particular neuropeptide in the brain that seemed to be linked with body weight while studying mice with the inability to produce orexin. Yes, the mice ate less, but for some reason the mice were gaining weight!

From a recent BBC article:

"Filming them around the clock, he discovered that they were far less active at night than normal mice. They were having cataleptic fits and falling asleep - they had narcolepsy. The orexin was not controlling obesity; it was dictating the animals' activity levels through their sleep patterns."

I hope that PETA doesn't get their hands on these researchers someday. It's sad to see movies such as these on Standford's website. As I understood from a recent TV show about them, the dogs fortunately haven't been just abandoned. The good news is, besides helping the fight agains narcolepsy, this research has spawned a narcolepsy test so dog lovers can assure that this problem won't affect successive generations of their animals.


Better than Bawls? Orexin and Hypocretins

Ultimately, it's been proposed that the human form of narcolepsy comes from the destruction of a small group of brain cells which generates orexin (a word named after the Greek word for hunger). A really nice explanation can be found at Dr. Jerome Siegel's website.

Orexins (also called hypocretins) are responsible for regulating both eating and sleep cycles. It's a curious thing .... orexin production is stimulated by fasting and giving an animal orexin makes them eat. Not having enough orexin causes drowsiness, and in the case of narcoleptics, fits of cataplexy (where you literally fall down asleep ... not the kind of behavior you want in a pilot or bus driver!). Theres a lot of interesting research out there on the net about it, so read up!

If you're so inclined (and likely a researcher with a fat corporate wallet) you can actually get ahold of some of this stuff. Various purity levels can rance from nearly $2000 per 100 micrograms (that's .001 gram ... ouch!) to about $400 for a half a miligram (a little better).

Apparently, the stuff is likely to be used for a lot of different things:

"Pharmacological intervention directed at the orexin receptors may prove to be an attractive avenue toward the discovery of novel therapeutics for diseases involving the dysregulation of energy homestasis, such as obesity and diabetes mellitus"

Beyond that, there's also evidence that orexin can be used to fight against pain.


The Potential Consequences of a Post-Coffee Society

Wow, staying up all the time, alert and without pain! As a LANner and a chronic nightowl, this whole discourse of scientific inquiry leaves me feeling at the same time both ecstatic and concerned. Right now, you can order a prescription for a drug called Modafinil, which activates the orexin-making cells in one's brain. Would this give people an unfair advantage over non-modafinil users? Ravers might get a kick out of dancing all night without ever getting tired and busy Corporate Execs might find themselves moving further up the corporate ladder. Heck, I can imagine going to CPL with a bottle of modafinil without having the need to suck down a case or two of Bawls to keep alert and alive for nearly a week of gaming.

More than anything, ZZZers will note the military ramifications:

"It is fascinating to see that several countries armed forces have studied (and use!) modafinil for military operations. The use of stimulants to keep troops awake and alert is not a new one. In fact, British troops used them during the Falklands conflict and that USAF aircrews took amphetamines during the Libyan air strikes. More recently the French government admitted that its crack Corp, the Foreign Legion, used modafinil during covert operations inside Iraq during the Gulf war.

In fact. Professor Michel Jouvet, an authority on sleep, claimed during an international defense meeting in Paris that, 'modafinil could keep an army on its feet and fighting for three days and nights with no major side effects.'"

Apparently, there's even a watch-like device used by the military to help monitor sleep patterns of soldiers.

No major side effects ... hmmm. Well, I think a very bad side effect might come from the future. Imagine competitive businesses dosing their employees' water cooler with a little modafinil and encouraging ever-lengthening workdays. Americans already work way too much already -- what happens to fun when you don't have to sleep anymore! Trust me, if you could stay awake forever, someone would take advantage of your abundance of time. The infomercial market would probably boom to say the least.

At least for me, there's a depleting amount of orexin in my brain here at 1:00 a.m. ... time for some ZZZs.