Article: The Special Sleep That Kicks In During a Sickness

[inox]

I'm not a fruit fly

but find this article interessting, and wonder if there is a human version.

When I was at my worst, I had hypersomnia, hardly "awake" at all. For me, whatever my ME is, clearly affects my sleep-wake cycles.

The sources of these sleep-inducing chemicals have proved surprisingly elusive, and scientists have found only a few that fit the bill. Now Hirofumi Toda from the University of Pennsylvania has discovered another—a gene called nemuri that triggers sleep, at least in fruit flies. Unexpectedly, it alsobecomes active during infections and acts to kill incoming microbes. It seems to be part of a self-regulating system, analogous enough to an internal thermostat that we might call it a sleep-o-stat. It can send animals to sleep when they most need shut-eye, whether because they’re sick or because they just haven’t slept enough.

This ability is intertwined with nemuri’s effects on sleep. Like us, flies sleep more when they get infections. The team found that these bouts of sickness-induced bed rest were longer when they deliberately switched nemuri on, and shorter if they disabled the gene. “There is an intimate link between sleep and the immune system,” Sehgal says.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...CBvqtoG6yZX0c8ZTvhgGqPv9f3D4FIKrn5bZ1rfdrSo1U

 

[rvallee]

I'm not a fruit fly

I'm sure we can fix that... with CBT!

 

[Snowdrop]

I'm sure we can fix that... with CBT!

I sense a Th(m)eme here. Sorry, wasn't sure which way to go with that.
CBT is sounding a lot like it's muscling in on tea's territory. I thought a nice cuppa was supposed to cure all ills.

 

[Alvin]

This article is very interesting.
What we don't know about sleep is far greater then what we do know so far.
Just in the last decade we have discovered the previously unknown but extremely important glymphatic system for example.

 

[Simbindi]

I sense a Th(m)eme here. Sorry, wasn't sure which way to go with that.
CBT is sounding a lot like it's muscling in on tea's territory. I thought a nice cuppa was supposed to cure all ills.

Maybe we could convince the tea industry to do a study on this - the efficacy of CBT vs a nice cuppa in x,y, z conditions? It'd be impossible to blind and the outcomes would be subjective, but that would fit nicely with the current research methodology used in this area of 'science'.

 

[Forbin]

If there's one thing the movies have taught me, it's that scientists should not get mixed up with flies!