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Drug Reverses Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:18 AM
from the sign-me-up-for-that-study dept.
from the sign-me-up-for-that-study dept.
Ryan O'Rourke writes "According to a study led by Dr. Sam A. Deadwyler and published by the Public Library of Science Biology, a new drug called CX717 developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals has been shown to reverse the biological and behavioral effects of sleep deprivation. Tests performed on monkeys that were subjected to 30-36 hours of sleep deprivation revealed an average test performance accuracy drop to 63 percent, but that performance was restored to 84 percent after administering CX717. During normal alert conditions, performance accuracy of the animals was improved from an average of 75 percent to 90 percent after an injection of CX717. It is also believed the drug may help prevent or restore memory loss in Alzheimer's patients."
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Drugs Eradicate the Need For Sleep 772 comments
MattSparkes writes "New Scientist is running an article on lifestyle drugs that claim to help you function on little or no sleep. I'm dubious, but the interviewee in the article claims they work well. 'Yves (not his real name), a 31-year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'" But, sleep is where I'm a Viking!
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Coming soon... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Coming soon... (Score:5, Funny)
EA_spouse spontaneously combusts.
Parent
Re:Coming soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
So while getting read of sleep deprivation effects might be nice, I really just need a drug that'll push me into the last-mile mindset and get me to actually do the amazing work that gets done under pressure. Caffeine and nicotine just don't cut it anymore.
Heck, like one of the replies to your post mentions, the C in this drug could stand for cocaine and it'd probably have the same effect if it WAS just cocaine, except maybe with the downside of addiction.
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Why in the world would you say that? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't believe that reasoning.
First: Asprin and Alcohol aren't patented, and aren't illegal.
Second: Lots of patented drugs are VERY illegal. (It takes a lot of money, time, red tape, and testing to get a new patented drug to the point where it is even legal to test on people.)
But then you say:
"We don't need a pill to help us work harder, we just need to adjust our expectations."
Which I totally agree with.
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Re:Why in the world would you say that? (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen you repeat this several times now - in what way does Ritalin "have the same effects" as speed?
Both Ritalin (called Methylphenidate in its non-brand name) and Speed (phenylisopropylamine) operate in a similar manner - both prevent the reabsorbtion of monoamine transporters for dopamine and norepinephrine which results in increased amounts of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain. This promotes nerve impulse transmission in neurons that have those receptors. The effect is something you're probably familiar with (either through experience or second-hand).
Likewise you can get the same high from snorting ritalin (powder it first unless you have biiig nostrils) as you can from speed, and you can get addicted to it too. Both are also used by students and workers desperate to keep focused on a project in that final night of panic. It's just the same as speed for practical purposes. Ritalin doesn't come in huge dosages (per pill), but then they are prescribing it to children.
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Re:Why in the world would you say that? (Score:4, Insightful)
That the other is prescription drug controlled by medical experts who have the necessary knowledge about it's effects and dosage, and the other is substance of unsure purity and blending sold by random crooks with no medical background whatsoever?
I agree. But the downside has relatively little to do with the drug itself and rather its legality. But that was your point too, so perhaps we're just agreeing with each other loudly.
Regarding this discrepancy between the two drugs' similarity yet their differing legal status, I think it happened something like this:
In the early sixties, Speed was outlawed and the police cracked down on it. This was accompanied by all the usual propaganda and hoo-ha, demonising Speed as a terrible evil. Later however, drug companies saw an opportunity to make money from speed but you can't suddenly turn round and say "You know that terrible stuff that will destroy your children, well it's okay if we give it to them." People would smell a rat.
So something that has a very similar effect is patented, marketed and in comes the money. But you know, Ritalin is spelt differently to Speed, so nobody panics about their children being fed it.
I normally avoid using any personal information in a discussion on
My £0.02.
-H.
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Re:Coming soon... (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Cocaine is illegal because of racism. The fear was that "Negro Cocaine Fiends" have an insatiable need for white women. These "Cocainized Niggers" were ostensibly immune to gun fire. The terms in quotes are actual quotes from newspapers.
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Re:Coming soon... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Coming soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I see happening is substances like this coming out and then people will abuse them. They will become addicted to them. Maybe not physically, but psychologically. "I can't be the best at my job if I don't take these so bottoms up!" As soon as abuse is spotted, public outcry will commence, support groups will spring up and tehy will become as popular as caffeine pills and speed. Not to say that caffeine pills aren't a problem, but they aren't mandatory by any employer and any company that doesn't want a lawsuit will not recommend or even offer them to their employees.
Your ideas have some merit to them and the "Look, why don't you just take one of these? You're letting us down." situation will probably occur, but it won't be at the company level. It will strictly be from employee to employee, peer to peer. Does your company have NoDoz (tm) in the break room? I doubt it.
Lastly, you "I crashed my car because they wouldn't sell me this at the garage and I fell asleep at the wheel." situation is not too likely in my mind. I can complain that my doctor didn't give me an adrenaline shot so I couldn't lift the car off of my wife when we got into a wreck. Ok, bad example, but anywho. I don't think you'll ever be able to register a justifiable complaint against someone because they didn't provide you with performance enhancing (because that's essentially what this is) drugs in any situation. You can complain on a medical basis (ie. my doctor wouldn't give me enough insulin and I went into a diabetic coma) but not on a supplemental basis.
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Women everywhere moan (Score:5, Funny)
I'm too tired honey....
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It's a trick: (Score:5, Funny)
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Something funny from the summary (Score:5, Funny)
Darn'd grandma. Her memory is improving again. Time to restore her memory loss.......
Ok, this is sort of scary....
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Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
"It's absolutely fantastic." Buzzeye says as he scrapes away the skin around his eyes with a rusty nail-puller. "I've never felt better, and my productivity is way up." When asked if there were any side-effects, Buzzeye replied "None whatsoever. Since I killed my wife and sold my children to Satan, who happens to live two doors down, things have been great. Now if I could only get the snakes to stop eating my feet, I'd be one hundred percent. Oh, could you get the door, I think it's Napoleon. He's a real bitch, and he likes to steal my aluminum brainguard."
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More links (Score:5, Informative)
Here [npr.org]
Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Insightful)
The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check. People who avoid sleep, people who keep themselves awake with drugs, people who burn the candle at both ends.. they are just setting themselves up for premature death. Just go to sleep!
As Kramer once said in an episode of Seinfeld.. "Well.. I don't argue with the body Jerry. It's an argument you can't win!"
Its a comment I whole heartedly agree with!
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Passed out once, and my roomate had 5 guys over working on a CS project and it didn't wake me up until 10:30 at night. They'd been there since about 11:00 and I'd been there, asleep, since the night before. And when I say "roommate" I mean we shared a ROOM. I scared the hell out of him when I woke up because they'd thought the big bump in my bed was just a continuation of all the crap piled on top of it. I got up, ate dinner, went right back to sleep.
I'm still paying for that crap, ten years later. It's totally not worth it.
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've often thought about why we still have certain primal signals.
Pain from obvious sources, for instance.
I skinned my knee. I know I skinned my knee. I can see it. I'm looking right at it. I just cleaned the darn thing. Yet it still smarts like hell.
Why can't I turn off the darn pain receptors?
Why, as a (okay, this next bit is questionable, but just go with it) intelligent being can't I just acknowledge those signals, and snooze them or something?
I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital.
I know, I'm exhausted. Let me get to a bed without falling over.
I know, I get the picture, send the right chemicals to the right places until I get the right treatment, but until then, just leave me alone!
My knee tells me it hurts for a reason: it needs attention so it won't get infection.
Broken bones hurt so they will get mended.
Neither one know they've been fixed once they've been tended to, so they continue to complain.
"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."
If this drug can keep us from actually needing to sleep, then it's just like my knee. I don't really need to sleep, but nobody's actually informed my body yet.
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of us are jealous of the relative ease with which the rest of you fall asleep. (The absolute worst is sharing a hotel room after a long trip, where your traveling companion falls asleep right away, but you don't fall asleep for hours) I'd be happy to at least feel as awake as most people seem. The only time I feel that way is when I can sleep in on the weekends. It's mostly just depressing that I can't be that alert the rest of the week -- you know, when it matters most.
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:4, Funny)
The second rule of fight clib, is don't talk about fight club...
Anyhow, I always try and fall asleep first if there is a woman sleeping in my bed with me- If she falls asleep first, you are likely to hear a terrific fart (women don't fart less than us, they just hold them, while we are proud of them, and as such they are much stinkier and louder) and once you hear a woman fart, the magic is gone....
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:4, Funny)
Or failing that, Russel & Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach"? My university-long insomnia cure - never could get more than four pages in before I dropped off...
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I understand, there's not a clear consensus on why we need sleep. I mean, it does a number of things, and we've figured many of them out, but as far as biology goes none of them seems to be a deal-breaker. I can easily imagine a large mammal that just walks around eating and doing stuff all day. Why is it that we spend a third of our lives in this comatose state?
I mean, it's pretty much taken for granted, but when I stop to think about it, it seems pretty damn weird. Imagine an alien that shows up and we say "we need to go, gotta sleep" and they say "why?" and we say "uhhhh, to recharge." "I thought you ate food for energy." "yeah, it's for . . . maintanence?" "what kind?" "not sure. it's just this powerful compulsion." "what are the leading theories? you mean you aren't even sure why you do this every night?" "zzzzzzz."
Just something interesting that I've given a lot of thought to, especially since I started working unpredicatble night shifts. I wonder if every major mammal needs sleep because we evolved with a light/dark cycle, or if it's just something that it's impossible to construct a complex brain without.
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well it may be as simple as that if you go all the time, things start to wear out. There is some justification for this in injuries. If you keep working the thing that is injured, it won't heal, if however you allow it to rest, your body will fix itself. Well some things, like our heart, can't ever really rest as in do nothing, so perhaps sleep is the next best thing, a perodic low state where essential organs can rest.
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Re:Don't ignore the signals. (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite oddball drugs that are heavily advertised are the "prevents that uncomfortable full feeling" and "cures fullness".
We literally live in a time when being full is considered a major problem worthy of heavy advertising to a large chunk of the human population. Consider the fact that the majority of human history is full of people fighting not to starve to death... and now we're worried about being uncomfortably full.
You can look at that with either bitter sarcasm or wonder at the accomplishments of humanity -- I rotate back and forth. But either way, it's durn funny.
--
Evan
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Heart attack in a pill (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a bunch of quacks to me (Score:4, Informative)
If any medical person was to suggest that I would immediately dismiss him as a total quack. There is NO SUCH THING as an outside environmental influence that affects just one portion of the body. "Cleaning up the clutter" in your brain is only one effect of sleep. Your brain isn't a computer hard drive that needs defragging every night--it is much more complex than that and what affects the brain can affect any and all other parts of the body. There are autonomic responses that change when the brain is asleep vs. awake, changes to hormone levels, etc. that without doubt promote regeneration of the body. Sure, you can rest your skeletal muscles and let them rebuild without actually sleeping, but you cannot consciously control your heartbeat, muscles controlling your GI tract, the levels of hormones in your bloodstream and so on, so how can you expect to simulate the effects of sleep without actually sleeping?
Beyond that, even if sleep was only about the brain, can you imagine the psychological effects of an accumulation of "weak memories" or excessively prolonged conscious brain activity? At best I think you'd end up being an ADD-like basket case. At worst you could go clinically insane.
I think that should such a drug that counteracts the symptoms of sleep deprivation become widely available those who abuse it would reveal to us a whole host of side effects related to lack of sleep never before encountered. Apart from degrading mental health I think that people would physically age faster without sleep. Look at drug addicts today-sometimes they start out as "normal", smart, professional people that fro some reason get caught in an addiction. Early in the addiction they can function amazingly well with little or no sleep, but they slowly degrade as they fry their brains. While they are hooked these addicts age twice as fast as normal--even if they never end up on the street addicts in their 30s look like they are 50.
This drug is like methadone--it is cocaine or speed without the highly addictive properties and some of the other adverse side effects. I believe that further, long-term/multi-year studies would reveal that the test animals might show good performance initially, but in a few years they'd look like junkies--even if they are still more mentally alert. I forsee similar results in humans--they might be very productive and alert compard to heroin addicts, but they'll look just as old and worn out.
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Slep deprvaiton .. (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a feeling most other computer users would find the same benefits from turning off their computers at 10:00PM.
Re:Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
I went for a week where I didn't allow myself to stay on the computer later than 10:00PM because of a severely distorted sleeping schedule, and by the end of the week, I had my schedule back to a very sane 11PM-8AM (I'm a teenager, so that might even be a little on the light side compared to some others, haha.) and I felt considerably more alert, as well as just feeling more healthy.
I doubt this drug will become a sleep replacement for the average man, but I can see it being used to help at critical times, such as having an emergency amount of it on-board a space shuttle in the event of a prolonged emergency where maximum alertness is necesary or similar scenarios.
I wouldn't mind having a few doses of this, though, for LAN parties. While everyone else is struggling to drag their mouse across their mousepad, I'll still be zipping around, even long after the Bawls run out.
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In the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would work for a while (Score:3, Interesting)
Though I am sure there are many coders who would try it for a week to get that project done(aka MSFT forcing it on longhorn developers?)
Grad students! (Score:3, Funny)
great! now I can work longer... (Score:5, Funny)
Is the trademarked name going to be (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh boy (Score:5, Interesting)
Expect Cortex's IP to be bought the us mil any second now.
Of course the real fun will be when they discover that taking this for months and sleeping 1 hour a night, you go insane and think your a humming bee.
Re:Oh boy (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, when going on extended missions, we also had the option of asking the platoon medics for stimulants. I don't remember what the name of the drug was, but one little white pill kept you up and alert for about two days. You did crash pretty hard after that. Anyway, while there may be some interest in the military for this drug, its use won't be anywhere near as prevalent as you seem to think. The Army likes its combat units to be operationally ready all the time, but also keeps mission durations and objectives as tight as possible to minimize battle fatigue and risk of combat losses. Sometimes you can't avoid a mission that lasts for a week, and in those (relatively rare - I only remember doing maybe a dozen of those two-day-plus missions over a year) situations, a drug to mitigate sleep-dep would be a godsend.
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Soon to follow: beverages (Score:5, Insightful)
I have ridden the mighty moon worm! (Score:4, Funny)
So when do I get my sweet glowing blue eyes?
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Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Rather than do the usual slashdot "Science is EViL" thing, why not really think about the potential here...
Yes, they will probably discover that over use of this has some serious side effect, but all that means is that it shouldn't be over used... It does not mean that we all need to run an hide...
For being a site full of geeks this place is remarkably anti science sometimes...
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
The question of why we sleep is still a bit of a mystery to me, but if you're simply looking at it as "defense from predators", you're going to fundamentally misunderstand the phenomenon.
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Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/arti
Species Average total sleep time per day
Python 18 hrs
Tiger 15.8 hrs
Cat 12.1 hrs
Chimpanzee 9.7 hrs
Sheep 3.8 hrs
African elephant 3.3 hrs
Giraffe 1.9 hr
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EA (Score:5, Funny)
Richie Rich foretold this (Score:3, Funny)
Richie Rich: harbinger of the future.
Sometimes it's good to forget. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your brain already does a pretty good job at figuring out what memories should be stored strongly and which ones should be left to fade away. It's almost certainly possible to override that mechanism, but you'll probably end up with incredibly vivid memories of things that aren't very relevant.
Imagine if I popped these pills before studying for organic chemistry in college. Now I'd be having flashbacks of acid/base interactions and other useless trivia while I try to go about my daily job.
Misleading summary, article (Score:5, Insightful)
This drug also increased test performance in the control group. The increase in test performance was slightly more pronounced in the sleep-deprived group.
Caffeine would likely show similar results, as would nasal decongestants and stimulant diet pills (both of which are amphetamines).
Hell, for that matter, I bet crystal meth, in low doses, would produce the same effect.
Meh, wake me up when the real fix for sleep deprivation is discovered... oh, wait...
Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1462046 8&query_hl=4 [nih.gov]
While they argue that this drug is different because of possibly less abuse potential (yet have no data to back that assertation up with, such as self-reinforcing studies in animals), I think the real reason is because pharmaceutical patents only last 20 years. As far as abuse potential goes, addiction is usually characterized by increased dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, of which amphetamine activates indirectly; I have seen no evidence as to whether or not CX717 will indirectly raise dopamine levels in that region of the brain as well.
They may claim they're not stimulants, but the action is that of binding to receptors and releasing a neurotransmitter called glutamate. Is that really so different than stimulants binding to a receptor and releasing norepinephrine, another neurotransmitter?
From the journal article, revealed increased activity in prefrontal cortex, dorsal striatum, and medial temporal lobe (including hippocampus) that was significantly enhanced over normal alert conditions following administration of CX717. You would see similar increases in brain activity following the administration of amphetamine as well.
Furthermore, high levels of glutamate have neurotoxic properties: In excess, glutamate causes neuronal damage and eventual cell death, particularly when NMDA receptors are activated.
Somehow though, I think the combination of a pharmaceutical company making $2.00 in profit per pill combined with possibly less of an abuse potential or political incorrectness of usage will make this drug preferred in spite of whatever risks it carries.
Of course, maybe I'm just bitter and skeptical in my old age.
Sleep and Orgasm. (Score:4, Funny)
In this society, we are powerfully encouraged to discharge that energy as quickly as possible through orgasm. According to some, sexual energy, once thus spent, is collected and consumed by etheric beings who exist in a higher level of reality and keep the human race like cattle for this purpose, (among others). True or not, you don't get to use your sexual energy once it's been given up through orgasm.
On the other hand, sexual energy can also be saved up and used in other ways. People who have a lot of regular sex tend to be exhausted and dim behind the eyes because their primary source of 'income' energy is much reduced. One's level of awareness and the availability of energy are directly linked to one another.
This is not to say that having orgasms is 'bad'. Physical sex is part of why we all came to this reality. It's fun, and it can be used to link in very powerful ways to other people, as well as link to otherwise difficult to access knowledge. But for the most part, people are instructed by the media to channel away their sexual energy immediately before it can be effectively used for anything else. In the morning, people often wake up in states of heightened arousal. This has nothing to do with holding back urination as conventional medicine tells us, (you don't get a woody any other time during the day when you need to 'go'. And it happens for women as well, who don't have the same plumbing) Sexual energy is there to be used as you wish.
In any case, sleep is the way this energy finds its way into us from the Universal source. Drugs which prevent sleep are, I assume, accessing stored wells of energy, which cannot last forever. There is a reason why they say, "Speed Kills". --Of course, there are other ways in which to draw energy from the world around us other than sleep, including drawing energy from the earth through grounding meditations and exercises, (good!) Eating food and consuming life force, (standard), energetic vampirism through direct and indirect methods of torturing others, (nasty and ultimately self-destructive.). But above all of these, Sexual energy is potent and pure and freely available to anybody who can catch 40 winks.
-FL