Snortable Drug 'Replaces' Sleep For Monkeys In Trials 236
sporkme writes "A DARPA-funded research project at UCLA has wrapped up a set of animal trials testing the effects of inhalation of the brain chemical orexin A, a deficiency of which is a characteristic of narcolepsy. Monkeys were deprived of sleep, and then given a shot of the compound. 'The study ... found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans. Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is 'specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness' without other impacts on the brain.' Researchers seem cautious to bill the treatment as a replacement for sleep, as it is not clear that adjusting brain chemistry could have the same physical benefits of real sleep in the long run. The drug is aimed at replacing amphetamines used by drowsy long-haul military pilots, but there would no doubt be large demand for such a remedy thanks to its apparent lack of side-effects."
But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:5, Interesting)
The question for me always is whether or not the drug can *replace* sleep and all of its critical physiological functions. Sleep is a complex phenomenon with very specific architectures that helps maintain learning, performance, sanity and literature suggests more far reaching benefits from regular sleep. Lots of drugs can make the brain look "awake" including amphetamines and modafinil, itself widely used by people to maintain activities in the face of sleep needs. However, there are long term biological implications for not allowing one to invoke sleep including poor long term performance on learning and memory and there is some literature that suggests cardiovascular implications as well as other problems. Now, while the adverse effects of amphetamines are well known, they have been used for at least 60 years. On the other hand, drugs like modafinil are very recent and you may be shocked to find out just how many physicians, pilots, military personnel, truck drivers and housewives are currently taking modafinil to maintain alertness in the face of lack of sleep.
Re:But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Our human body's through evolution have become very advanced and have developed some fantastic biological systems. If we consider that we sleep for a 3rd of our 24hours day and this is the best that evolution can do for us then there are obviously some very important processes/actions that happen when we're sleeping. If sleep wasn't such an important factor then us as animals would have surely evolved enough to not need sleep, with no sleep we would have more time to fo
Re:But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:5, Interesting)
A drug that would make sleep unnecessary?
Pass.
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"Cocaine is a hell of a drug"
Cheers.
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Re:But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe this is unique to artists, musicians, writers, etc. Perhaps if I was some sort of middle manager or legal secretary or director of tech support for an insurance company, lack of sleep would make less difference. But I bet programmers do better with a good night's sleep.
I understant that when you work 8-10 hours and sleep 8 hours and commute 2.5 hours it doesn't leave a lot of time for living. That's why I've tried so hard to arrange my life so I don't have to work 40 hours per week to support my family and have tried to live close to my place of work (or work at home) so I don't throw away so many hours of spirit-draining activities such as commuting. Although, for the few years that I rode my bike 15 miles to (and from) work every day, I found that under certain circumstances, commuting doesn't have to be so bad.
But the main thing was coming to terms with the fact that working 40+ hours every week in a job that you don't like just so you can have health insurance and pay credit card debt was not an acceptable way to live. Then, it was just a matter of making my decisions with that in mind.
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I had my thyroid entirely removed due to cancer. I'd never really heard of the gland before. Until they finally got the levels right, it was hell. Constant exhaustion.
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You need 12 hrs of sleep? Are you sure you don't have some sort of psychological issue (depression?) or physical one (stroke?). I thought 8 hours was the norm, and once you go above 10 or below 6 or 7, you are either pushing things or are ill.
I had 2 strokes, and I probably vary between needing 8-12 hours of sleep...depending. I also have kidney failure, so that may add some to the mix. Though if I am fairly active for 2 hours or more in a day I may need more sleep, but the pain can keep me from falling a
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You have a wife and kid... and get 9 hours of UNINTERRUPTED sleep?
Here I thought 3 hours of interrupted sleep was asking too much.
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Yeah, leave it to science to try to replace the one part of my life that I really, unconditionally adore.
"Science" isn't trying to replace that, people are trying to do that. Science is just the tool used to accomplish it.
If you want to blame anything, blame the motivation people have to sleep less and less. The research is funded by the military for pilots, but the interest from the rest of the public comes from that.
Re:But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was in college, and for some years thereafter, I made a living playing in a band. That meant staying out until 4-5am every night, sleeping until after noon, then doing it all over again. Even when I transitioned to a more conventional lifestyle, I was still definitely a night person and would stay up reading late into the night and then sleeping late (on the weekends at least) when I could and hating to wake up in the morning.
But going to be early, and then finding out just how lovely it is to be awake at 5am when the world is still asleep, was an epiphany for me. Now I've learned that those first few hours of the morning are my most productive. Maybe it's middle age, but I have been transformed into a total morning person and I'm much happier for it.
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Yeah, wasn't there an X-Files episode [tv.com] on that? :-)
A world without sleep (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A world without sleep (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A world without sleep (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, even if it shorten the lifespan of individuals when counted in days of life, it would be interesting to see if it extends it when counted in "awaken hours".
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(yes i realize all the downsides including more energy/resources being consumed per individual, etc.)
Just reduce the sleep hrs needed to 3 (Score:2)
And if you do need to skip 1 day every few weeks then so be it, hey I went with 1 day a week without a sleep for 3 months and it was ok.
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For the most part people think that sleep must be needed because people feel sleepy. Artificially creating a disconnect between sleepiness and the need for sleep means that you may not be able to use one as a guide to the other. It is very much like the free will arguments. The strongest argument for free will is that people feel they have it but there are experiments to show the feeling i
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No, people think that they need sleep because not sleeping will kill [wikipedia.org] you.
One could also use simple logic: you are vulnerable while you sleep, so if it isn't an actual physical need, I doubt very much it would be as widespread phenomenom as it is.
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This could lead to a so-called super soldier who doesn't need sleep going on a rampage and killing his comrades because he thought he saw the enemy. You can't just replace sleep with a pi
Not yet (Score:2)
Just because something hasn't been solved yet, doesn't mean it won't be solved in the future.
Perhaps there is some fundamental reason that this simply can't be done. But we have yet to discover that as well.
Dr Strangesnuggle (Score:2)
Years ago I was asked to join a group doing government work in exploring drugs related to sleep replacement or to maintain alertness in certain groups of people. This sort of stuff made me uncomfortable then and it still gives me the creeps.
Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, was quoted as follows in TFA:
"We have to realize that we are already living in a society where we are already self-medicating with caffeine," he said.
Apparently, that's your answer. We already cash our paychecks at the Adenosine Quickie Mart. Why not also mortgage your house at the Orexin Casino?
Based on this quote, Dr Siegel strikes me as a jerk in a white lab coat. Exactly why do we "have to realize" this little fact about caffeine? Has he been viewing too many spokesmartians for the Bush administration on late night TV?
How about "We have to realize we live in a society
Re:But can it *replace* sleep? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's that? No, you can't back out. Think of the animals!
Replacement for sleep? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Replacement for sleep? (Score:5, Funny)
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(if you are, they notice it)
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Being in a state of very low alertness in a jungle is something which would have been filtered out by evolution long long ago.
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Actually many animals hunt or graze at certain times of the time. It would be rather wasteful for them to up all the time moving about when conditions aren't right for their normal eating habits.
Imagine a bat unable to sleep during the day or a bear unable to sleep during hibernation.
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Do you have any idea how many calories a well fit body uses? The kind of animal that lives in the wild uses a lot of energy. It's only natural that they'd go into some form or powered down mode during periods where the energy cost of hunting for foo
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Its not intended to replace sleep.
Secondly DARPA usually doesn't do research for public consumption. Eventually it would get there, but for now its going straight to the military.
My bet would be this is aimed for fighter/bomber pilots running 48 hour shifts.
Currently one of the most proscribed drugs in the Airforce is of course the same drugs narcoleptic people use.
Actually, this is straight of a sci-fi military book about war in 2020 I read once. Can't remember the name but the o
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2 am post (Score:4, Funny)
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- RG>
Re:2 am post (Score:4, Funny)
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replacement vs supplement (Score:4, Interesting)
Will Smith said not to research crazy new drugs (Score:5, Funny)
Zombies.
Why not modafinil? (Score:3, Interesting)
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I wonder why long haul military pilots are any different, surely they also have more than one person on board?
Most Conservative Response (Score:3, Informative)
All we've got is... (Score:3, Insightful)
More research needs to be done before we can have a worthwhile discussion of this as a "sleep replacement."
Also, this would not be a permanent replacement, so no trying to bash this study with the 'The human body needs sleep' argument.
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I do wonder if it can be applied as a quick fix.
It would have to work nearly instantly, though... imagine a sleepy driver. The car's computer can detect the drowsiness, make a surprising, loud noise to snap the driver awake, and spray a mist of this drug in his face. Enough to get home safely, but not enough to hamper the real sleep he'll get when he gets home.
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I do wonder if it can be applied as a quick fix.
It would have to work nearly instantly, though... imagine a sleepy driver. The car's computer can detect the drowsiness, make a surprising, loud noise to snap the driver awake, and spray a mist of this drug in his face. Enough to get home safely, but not enough to hamper the real sleep he'll get when he gets home.
"We've secretly replaced Joe's Sleep-B-Gone with new Folger's pepper spray. Can he tell the difference? Let's watch."
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"Aaagh! My eyes!" Hilarity ensues.
Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
But, almost anything with measurable cognitive abilities needs sleep. So there must be some very important work going on there. Probably laying down neural hardlines where temporary chemicals were making pathways before? I'm just guessing, but it's got to be something that requires a partial shutdown.
I think the technology is cool and would be useful for some things, though. I'm always in favor of exploring the outer limits of our abilities. It will be very interesting to see what happens if a person uses this chemical sleep exclusively for, say weeks at a time. Maybe we'll learn what sleep is really for by seeing what stops working correctly. My guess is that they'll not be able to recall anything beyond the past couple days. Things that happened too far back in their wakefulness will not get layed down as long term memories and will be permanently lost.
That is, it'll be kind of like Memento except with, say, a 72 hour working memory instead of 10 minutes.
Re:Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Speculation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a link to the story I heard about.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6503414 [npr.org]
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Re:Speculation (Score:4, Funny)
*shudder* That's the sort of horror story that keeps me up at night...
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Perhaps needing to be unconscious for hours at a time is one of the reasons many animals have to join together in groups, and tho
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Neccessary to attract a mate; increases the chances of breeding.
Neccessary to keep the sperm at optimal temperature, which is lower than the optimal temperature for the rest of the body. Increases your chances of breeding, and isn't actually all that vulnerable; if an enemy is close enough to kick you in the balls, it is close enough to rip out your throat.
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Being unconscious may well have been slightly less of a disadvantage than the gains animals get from it. Growing to 3 meters tall would have been an amazing advantage as well, and it's not inherently necessary for humans to be 1/3rd shorter, as we are.
Sleep may well just be a method to conserve energy (see: hibernation) during the useless hours of the day, whe
Re:Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Interesting.. I have always thought this but did not know it was a popular theory.
My explanation for this is that we evolved as a social species that worked in groups. It is also important to note that we sleep in cycles - only going into deep sleep for a small part of the night. Combine these two facts and one can see how sleeping in a group would result in at least part of the group always being alert to predator
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A quote from my high school days (Score:4, Insightful)
This sort of stuff creeps me out. As BWJones commented, we don't know enough about exactly how sleep works and what its function is in our mental health to start eliminating it by messing with the brain's chemistry. This will likely end up being abused by someone, be it the military, commercial pilots, or students trying to cram for a test, or some sicko as part of a brain washing regime, it doesn't matter, it will happen and it won't be pretty.
I'll stick with coffee thank you very much.
lan party! (Score:2)
In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
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s/Sysadmins/Managers/
Sysadmins know that regular scheduled downtime is necessary to keep things running smoothly. A well designed system can take certain parts offline without causing a noticible loss of service. The human brain runs roughly similarly; parts can come and go from service (sleep, etc) and the brain will keep running.
Regular scheduled downtime in controlled conditions keeps your machine runn
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I was wondering what the managers here were giving us to keep us going. hmmm more powdered donuts please!
Some people already do live without sleep (Score:4, Interesting)
One was a guy in his twenties who lived in Israel. An explosion left some shrapnel in his brain and could no longer sleep. When I read the story, he was just finishing a Law degree.
Another story was about an older man in Germany who hadn't been able to sleep at least since his teens. He was 50ish and could sleep for up to 5 minutes at best. He lived a relatively normal life.
Obviously in some cases, the body can adjust to getting by without sleep - I wonder if their bodies learned how to overproduce this chemical?
If only... (Score:2)
Snortable? What filters? (Score:2)
Dear God! (Score:2, Funny)
Snorting (Score:2)
(I will leave the discussion on suppositories for another day
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As an aside, who discovered "snorting" as a delivery mechanism for drugs (as opposed to eating or smoking)? And why do people only snort certain drugs, what makes those particular ones suitable?
There's a surprisingly detailed history on the insufflation [wikipedia.org] page over at Wikipedia. As for what makes something suitable? Water soluble, with small enough molecules to make it through the mucus membrane, and that doesn't cause an unbearable amount of irritation. I'm sure I'm missing quite a few things that would factor in to it, but I believe those are the most important ones.
Re:Snorting, inhalation != insufflation (Score:2, Informative)
With ingestion, the chemical is absorbed through the digestive system. When insufflated, it is absorbed via the mucus membrane at the top & back of your nasal cavity. Inhaled drugs are absorbed through the lungs, and injection needs no explanation.
The difference is usually a duration/intensity trade-off based on how quickly the chemical enters the bloodstream in its entirety. I listed them above with the l
Sounds familiar (Score:2)
The new norm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Free time will be filled with more work to do. In a world where sleep is optional, some people will be willing to work 20 hours a day or more. Slowly, this will become expected.
This tech is here to stay; trying to change that would just be silly. If, as posters above have said, this isn't really a sleep replacement then it's only a matter of time, the tech will come.
Some people will try to call it "unnatural" or "evil", it won't make a difference.
The question is,
how will you react when it happens and you're asked to come in for an 18 hour workday instead of your normal 8-12 to "stay competitive".
Is it that crazy of an idea that maybe people should
*sadly goes off and reads a book*
Fun Facts About Orexin (and possible downsides) (Score:5, Interesting)
All which leads me to the question, how could this effect eating disorders and addiction? It's been shown that blocking the orexin system decreases relapse to drugs in animal models. Could artificially increasing the levels of orexin in the brain support the development or maintenance of drug abuse? Could it have similar effects on eating? It is interesting (and makes sense) that it only affected drowsy monkeys, as orexin seems to support the maintenance of wakefulness, so it's possible that there's a ceiling effect to orexin. Still, I'd be wary of longterm exposure to non-natural levels.
Social Cycle (Score:2)
It's funny, just *yesterday* I was thinking to myself the following: Every decade or so a new drug is invented that is claimed to have no adverse side-effects. The young kids say "Ah, at last! We can take this drug without a downside!" And only later in the decade do the side effects appear evident.
My girlfriend can remember her mother saying in the 80's "Have you heard about this new drug cocaine? It's t
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This reasoning error is basically an inductive fallacy [wikipedia.org].
Wow! It's not cheap (Score:4, Informative)
1 milligram about $560.
Still, if it works. Think of all the extra billable hours...
Yeah and IBM would still not give out increases (Score:2)
Nothing extraordinary (Score:2)
You can stay awake on modafinil for up to 3 days in row without sleep - it is not pleasant since you dont feel refreshed but you are also not exhausted. Modafinil is devoid of the manically stimulated, clenching-jaw, no-one-can-stop-me-now driven delusional state like with amphetamines. Modafinil has no pleasure-producing qualities and no long-term ill effect. But rats kept on mo
Why amphetamines? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Its just the military pilots. You know, the ones with nukes strapped to their plane.
Re:Pilots on meth? (Score:5, Informative)
The amphetamines used by pilots are very slow-acting (by amphetamine standards) so they don't produce quite as much of the "jittery high" that is usually associated with their more common forms. 8+ hours later when the amphetamine pill finally wears off and the pilot is capable of sleeping again he will, if by no other means than running out of fuel, have ended the mission and found a safer place to catch up on the missed sleep. Potent stimulants have been used by combat troops since WWII so various world militaries have presumably become the reigning experts by now on their effects when used in extreme moderation.
The aforementioned controls notwithstanding, I'd much rather have pilots with nukes alert at the end of a 20-hr flight than dozing off. I'll put this into context for my fellow geeks: If you've ever been sleep-deprived at a LAN Party I'm sure you realize how much microsleep can throw off your aim and timing. Now double that no-sleep time, add in stress from the real threat of being shot down, and replace your mouse with the targeting mechanism for a 10-ton precision bomb that really shouldn't end up in the preschool next door (collateral damage?) ;)
Long-haul truckers, on the other hand, have a jittery high from the no-doze and a pretty debilitating crash on its way long before the end of their route. That being said, I like to make the generalization that awake people are universally safer than sleeping people when it comes to controlling large masses of fast-moving metal and even more so when you add combustible/hazardous materials.
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The amphetamines used by pilots are very slow-acting (by amphetamine standards) so they don't produce quite as much of the "jittery high" that is usually associated with their more common forms. [...] I'd much rather have pilots with nukes alert at the end of a 20-hr flight than dozing off.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1956983.stm [bbc.co.uk]
mourning at a ceremony for the four soldiers killed by US "friendly fire" in Afghanistan. A US F-16 dropped a 227-kilogram bomb on the men while they were taking part in a live-fire training exercise near Kandahar.
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I'm not sure what I said to get modded down. I was just asking if the implication was true and wasn't passing judgement on it.
It was meant in the same way that a few years ago I might have asked if people were really using botulism toxin for cosmetic treatments. It makes sense in its way and apparently the powers the be have studied the heck out of it, but it's still a little weird when you sit back and think of it.
To Be Specific... (Score:5, Informative)
The amphetamine in the "Go Pills" used by the USAF is dextro-amphetamine. This is NOT a derivative of methamphetamine. They are both derivatives of phenethylamine, and belong to that class of drugs. Amphetamine is an acronym of Alpha-Methyl-PHenEThylAMINE (ie: it's a phenethylamine molecule with a methyl group attached at the alpha position). Amphetamine is chiral, meaning that it has a stereocenter: because the molecule exists in 3D space there are two "versions" of it (called "isomers") that have the same atomic makeup, but are turned in different directions, and are thus non-superimposable. Dextroamphetamine is the dextrorotary isomer of regular ol' amphetamine. (The other isomer is called levo-amphetamine.)
This is NOT even remotely the same thing as methamphetamine. Do you know anyone on Adderall for ADHD? They are on dexamphetamine. Adderall is a mixture of both isomers of the amphetamine molecule (called a "racemic mixture"). Remember that seemingly minor changes in structure can cause a drug to have vastly different effects. The fact that the amphetamines are stimulants is something of an anomaly, since they're part of the larger class of Phenethylamines, and most PEAs are actually psychedelics (including drugs like MDMA, mescaline, MDMCat, MDA, and the 2C and DOx classes of "research" psychedelics).
I just want to counter any assumption people might take from this post that Air Force pilots are flying around jacked up to the gills on meth, fiending for a hit from the pipe, and screaming about the spiders crawling underneath their skin. Methamphetamine is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of the amphetamine family; similar to how heroin (diacetylmorphine) is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of morphine or fentanyl (80 times stronger than morphine, and not uncommonly used in epidurals during childbirth). As the parent suggests, there isn't anything dangerous in an expertly trained pilot taking dexamphetamine at a reasonable dose under medical supervision. If there is, there are thousands of college students out there popping Adderall illegally to study for exams because it intensifies concentration who would probably like to know about it! Methamphetamine, however, as I'm sure you've all seen on the news, is an entirely different animal...
This isn't so much a reply to the parent as a clarification of a lot of the "USAF pilots are taking meth!" posts I've seen in this thread. It's just not the same thing.
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Methamphetamine is not ONLY a "street drug". It is actually available by prescription, under the brand name Desoxyn, and used in the treatment of narcolepsy and severe ADD/ADHD.
Heroin, OTOH, is listed in DEA schedule I, and is banned from medical use in the US. It is used in other countries for the
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