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Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

science.org

311–320 of 325 posts

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please elaborate.

The conclusions are pushed and hyperbolic exactly to get this type of reaction from the public, at best conflating control with function (we solved sleep) while the sleep phenotype itself is basically non-existing. Proper rebuttals will come up in due time on the appropriate channels. all the colleagues I talked to are as pissed off as I am about this way of doing science.

“They hyped their conclusions a lot” is par of the course, but

> the sleep phenotype itself is basically non-existing

is not. Can you explain that in more detail?

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#312
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not 'exclusively' slept, but koalas[1] sleep for a majority of the day (16-20 hours) in order to digest highly toxic eucalyptus leaves which constitute the main portion of their diet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koala

Fascinating. I wonder whether they'd sleep less if fed a less toxic, more easily digestible diet.

Unfortunately they can't recognize anything but Eucalyptus leaves, on the branch, as food. A pile of the leaves isn't food to them, they won't eat it.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#313

I wonder how this relates to sleep apnea, as in that state you sleep more the less oxygen you get. By the way, many people who don't think they have it yet feel tired during the day or simply feel like they need more sleep should get tested for it, as it's not just a problem for the obese.

My dad always had a notorious sleep apnea but also has notoriously been strong & 'youthful' all his life, very active, even up to this day at almost 70(never working desk jobs, always moving, etc). This always leaves me wondering about how relevant & impactful this kind of thing really is..

Perhaps in your dad's case, it's despite, not because.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I am just going to reply to this comment instead of going through each of yours. You are saying a lot about "Tact" but have yet to actually propose an alternative to how the OP said what they said. It is fairly common that because someone is not in a traditionally higher risk group for a common thing that they don't get tested for it, even if they have certain symptoms. This is the case both personally and doctors ma…

It is actually so funny to see all of their subcomments being dead now, I guess people really did not like the tone they had.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#315
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Maybe try quadrupling down on the incorrect thing you said, that usually works out well. > Learn tact. You do not have it. We've asked you before to avoid personal swipes like this on HN. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Thank you, Tom. You're doing well moderating this corner of the Internet.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. I wonder whether they'd sleep less if fed a less toxic, more easily digestible diet.

Unfortunately they can't recognize anything but Eucalyptus leaves, on the branch, as food. A pile of the leaves isn't food to them, they won't eat it.

Weird niche to corner! Exclusively eat the poison nobody else wants to the exclusion of anything else.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#317
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There definitely was never a life form which exclusively slept - all the critical parts of life require being awake. Life that didn't sleep, however, is possible.

Depends on your definition but several... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep

[deleted]

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#318
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By animal standards, plants are permanently dormant. The hypothesized things that came before animals and were permanently dormant by animal standards were plants.

No, they are not. Dormant doesn't mean stationary. You are not asleep when you are sitting still watching TV.

And also plants diverged from a common ancestor with animals, animals didn't evolve from plants. Animals (and all other eukaryotes) probably evolved from something more like the Archaea, which don't seem to have anything resembling sleep.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mitochondria are too universal and sleep is too specific to the brain The brain has uniquely high specific power requirements per gram of dry weight. Not even the heart is this power-hungry. This surely places a lot of uniquely high metabolic stress on the neural cells. And neural cells are long-living, so they can't be easily replaced throughout the lifetime. So their housekeeping has to be very thorough, carefull…

Mitochondrial dysfunction literally leads to Alzheimers, dementia, etc. The link is clear as day - don't sleep, lose your mind. Put a different way, life rusts (oxidizes) your brain, and sleep de-rusts it. And unfortunately I'm still someone who regularly pulls all nighters because of a combination of disorders, ADHD and sleep cycle issues. I'm killing myself rather prematurely. But then, all addictions tend to do th…

Maybe the heart can just handle the stress longer before something visible breaks? It has a simpler function than the brain, which probably helps. If people tend to die of cancer first (or whatever), the heart only needs to withstand about 80 years of gunk buildup to not be the weakest link.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#320
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call it sleep still, if it is so different from what we call sleep?

We know plants have a diurnal cycle and react to sun/day and some visibly change between night and day. If we say that one of these states is less active, we may decide to call it dormant. Dormant comes from latin dormire, which is sleep. So... why not?

Animals have a sleep-wake cycle that is usually synchronized with the day-night (24 hour) cycle of the Earth. But this synchronization is not essential. All animals with nervous system have a sleep-wake cycle, even if they live underground or in the deep ocean, where the day-night cycle has no significant effect. So there must be an actual need for the sleep-wake cycle that is independent of the rotation of the Earth.
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