Posted on 04/09/2013 6:43:34 PM PDT by neverdem
Insomniacs desperate for some zzzs may one day have a safer way to get them. Scientists have developed a new sleep medication that has induced sleep in rodents and monkeys without apparently impairing cognition, a potentially dangerous side effect of common sleep aids. The discovery, which originated in work explaining narcolepsy, could lead to a new class of drugs that help people who don't respond to other treatments.
Between 10% and 15% of Americans chronically struggle with getting to or staying asleep. Many of them turn to sleeping pills for relief, and most are prescribed drugs, such as zolpidem (Ambien) and eszopiclone (Lunesta), that slow down the brain by binding to receptors for GABA, a neurotransmitter that's involved in mood, cognition, and muscle tone. But because the drugs target GABA indiscriminately, they can also impair cognition, causing amnesia, confusion, and other problems with learning and memory, along with a number of strange sleepwalking behaviors, including wandering, eating, and driving while asleep. This has led many researchers to seek out alternative mechanisms for inducing sleep.
Neuroscientist Jason Uslaner of Merck Research Laboratories in West Point, Pennsylvania, and colleagues decided to tap into the brain's orexin system. Orexin (also known as hypocretin) is a protein that controls wakefulness and is missing in people with narcolepsy. Past studies successfully induced sleep by inhibiting orexin, but had not looked into its effects on cognition. The researchers developed a new orexin-inhibiting compound called DORA-22 and confirmed that it could induce sleep in rats and rhesus monkeys as effectively as the GABA-modulating drugs.
Then the researchers went about testing the drugs' effects on the animals' cognition. They measured the rats' cognition and memory by assessing the rodents' ability to recognize objects. They presented the rats with a new object—say, a cone or a sphere—that the rats then sniffed and explored. Then they took the object away for an hour. After that hour, the rats were exposed to a new object and the one they'd already gotten to know; if the rats remembered, they spent less time checking out the familiar object. With the primates, Uslaner's team tested their ability to match colors on a touchscreen and to pay attention to and identify the origin of a flashing light. In all the cases, the researchers found the GABA-modulating sleeping pills caused both the rats and the primates to respond more slowly and less accurately. Monkeys taking the memory and attention tests, for example, were 20% less accurate on the highest dose of each of the GABA-modulating drugs. But DORA-22 had no such effect on cognition, the team reports today in Science Translational Medicine.
"We were very excited," Uslaner says. "Folks who take sleep medications need to be able to perform cognitive tasks when they awake, and this [compound] could help them do so without impairment."
Although DORA-22 has not yet been tested in humans, it holds tremendous promise for helping people suffering from sleep disorders, says Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep researcher with the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. "This study is encouraging and exciting, because there's good reason to believe it would work differently from what we've used in the past," says Mignot, who helped discover the link between orexin (or its absence) and narcolepsy. "Not every drug works for everyone, so it's really, really good news to have a potential new drug on the horizon."
“non-addictive”
The pharmaceuticl industry again assumes that we are stupid.
They have substitued the phrase ‘addicitve’ for ‘dependent’. ;-)
my wife and the kids nearly every night, works like a charm
Generic (store brand) benydryl. Great nights sleep and NO sniffles or hives!
I rarely have trouble falling asleep. I’ve tried counting down from 100 and some nights I never get to 85.
My problem is I sleep soundly for 4-5 hours and them BAM, wide awake. I don’t feel tired. I usually get up and read hundreds of posts on FR until it’s time to get ready for work.
But later in the day, I feel it. The next night I sleep like a baby, but rarely much more than 6-7 hours. This cycle can’t be good for me. What I need is something that is timed-released to knock me out just before I wake up. If I go to sleep at 10, some nights I am up for good by 2 or 3. Crazy!
Smirnoff Ice.
Or ‘habit forming’ heheh.
I had heard that advice about raw honey and I was skeptical but thought it couldn’t hurt. I tried it and I was amazed at how well it worked. The explanation was that it gave the liver something to ‘work’ on during sleep which causes the release of melatonin. A depleted liver causes the release of cortisol which is a stress hormone.
Whatever you do, don’t mix ambien and alcohol. You might shoot yourself in the hand and have no memory of it.
LOL!
Use raw honey only! Part of an article pasted below:
McInnes concluded that honey’s potential role in restorative sleep may have implications for improving long-term health. He reviewed three possible mechanisms behind the recommendation of taking honey at bedtime:
1) honey provides enough glycogen (stored energy) for the liver over eight hours of sleep, which lessens the early morning release of cortisol and adrenalin (stress hormones);
2) honey stabilizes blood sugar levels;
3) honey contributes to the release of melatonin, the hormone required for recovery and rebuilding of body tissues during rest.
Honey’s potential role in the suppression of the release of stress hormones and the promotion of restorative hormones has major health implications for a society suffering from a habit of inadequate sleep.
http://www.bee-pollen-buzz.com/benefits-of-raw-honey.html
Thank you very much.
CC
Correct! Thanks for pointing that out. Use RAW and UNFILTERED honey only.
Thank you, christianhomeschoolmommaof3.
Get stuff by Dan Gibson if you have Pandora. Nature sounds, birds, water, thunderstorms. Very nice.
GABA itself is sleep inducing, w/o side effects. 500 mg just before going to bed. And if something does wake you during the night, take another 500 mg when you go back to bed. For many people they will be asleep in the next 15 minutes or so.
It is very dangerous to mess with the GABA receptor sites. This can cause long term problems. Especially as we age. GABA receptor sites can be ‘permanently’ blocked.
Having read down the posts, I also agree with the ‘spoonful of honey’ before going to bed...for the reasons stated in the posts.
You are both welcome.
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