What If We Didn’t Need to Sleep?

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Everyone wants to add a little more time to their day. What if you could add another eight hours every now and again? Wouldn’t that change your life? Of course it would.

It may sound like I’m dreaming. There’s no possible way we could function without proper sleep, right? It wasn’t too long ago that I suggested getting the right amount of sleep before. So what has changed?

Nothing has changed yet, but it may be in the future. According to this Wired article on sleep deprivation, a spray of a hormone called orexin A can get you up and running just like you got sleep. In tests, monkeys were deprived of sleep for 30 to 36 hours and given either orexin A or a placebo. The monkeys getting the orexin A performed just as well on cognitive test as the alert monkeys. The ones receiving the placebo didn’t do well at all on the tests. PET scans of the monkeys brains with the orexin A looked similar to monkeys who weren’t sleep deprived.

This is exciting news for those with sleep disorders. For the rest of us, our enthusiasm should be tempered. The body uses sleep to repair and ready itself for a new day. Without that time, there will likely be side effects. The bad news is that no one will likely get to try it for years. It could take more than a decade to get approved by the FDA.

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Posted by Lazy Man on January 4, 2008 in Sleep.

2 Responses to “What If We Didn’t Need to Sleep?”

Blubba Says:
January 5th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
That would be fantastic. I work in a field that often requires working anywhere from 24-50 hours straight. I know that a lot of people in my field have tried using modafinil, which apparently does a good job of keeping one alert and not tired for a couple of days (I don’t want to think of the non-prescription alternatives that are probably widely used).

It still seems unnatural, and I am strongly suspicious of the possible side effects.

For now, I agree that regular and suffucient sleep is necessary for our bodies (and especially for those of us trying to lose weight).
Diet Plans Reviewed Says:
January 14th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Wow, that is scary. I would have to see long term effects of it before I even tried to use it.