A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’ • Hacker News Board

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#61

Post by Noseshine » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 11:23 AM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #20

gnaritas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem obvious at all, it presumes sleeping is about conserving energy and that's an unwarranted assumption and baseless assumption. Sleep very well could be a requirement for brains to work they way they do. If you are deprived of sleep you will shortly go crazy; sleep isn't about saving energy. If you see anything that seems obvious, you can bet science already checked that out and moved past it and that…

Yeah. For starters, there is a whole bunch of toxins that build up when you don't sleep enough. But it can't be the whole story, as why wouldn't we have mechanisms to remove those and keep the brain functioning? It can't be all about memory retention. There are some fascinating studies on how some groups of neurons repeat the same patterns they did when the organism was awake, presumedly for long-term storage. But wh…

    > why wouldn't we have mechanisms to remove those and keep the brain functioning?

I don't know if it's in the links below, but I remember hearing a talk that the flushing required physical changes inside the brain: Widening of channels (by neurons getting smaller and making room, if I remember that correctly?). So normal function can't go on while the flushing process is being performed.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flus...

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-sle...

Since we have distinct sleep phases we may not have just one "sleep", (very) different things going on at different phases.

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#62

Post by dalke » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 12:13 PM UTC

duckingtest wrote: post #38

dimino wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your "melatonin" suggestion is that there's no way to know how much melatonin you actually took, since there is no regulation on the chemical, and the "sleep pills" that are purchasable don't say on the label what concentration they're made at, and concentrations vary by brand, and could vary bottle to bottle (due to an inexact manufacturing technique, for example).

In several EU countries, you can buy melatonin pills made by an actual pharmaceutical companies (which also manufacture prescription drugs) OTC. You could order it online. Note there's a difference between unregulated supplement and an OTC drug. Although I think your worry about quality excessive, it's not like making pills is rocket science. The supplement companies most likely get the powder in bulk from biochemica…

In the US, the supplement industry is much less regulated than the pharmaceutical industry.

The concern is not excessive, at least in the US. Consider https://consumerist.com/2016/07/27/anyone-can-make-market-a-... :

> While real drugs — prescription or over-the-counter — must demonstrate levels of safety and effectiveness before hitting store shelves, dietary supplements are effectively regulated like food products.

https://consumerist.com/2016/01/20/7-things-you-need-to-know... gives a summary of a Frontline episode on the topic; Frontline does documentaries on public affairs topics.

Or, from 2001, http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/73/6/1101.full - "All plant products were correctly identified by botanical plant species (ie, Panax species or E. senticosus); however, concentrations of marker compounds differed significantly from labeled amounts. There was also significant product-to-product variability: concentrations of ginsenosides varied by 15- and 36-fold in capsules and liquids, respectively, and concentrations of eleutherosides varied by 43- and 200-fold in capsules and liquids, respectively."

Or from the 1990s, http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0003/lmb.html :

> Analysis of 16 commercial DHEA products revealed that only half the products contained the amount of DHEA stated on the product label; content varied from 0 to 150% of the stated content (Parasrampuria et al., 1998).

> Melatonin supplements have failed to meet quality claims or delivery profiles stated on their labels (Hahm et al., 1999).

It lists others as well.

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#63

Post by anotherdev » Sat, Aug 06, 2016, 3:26 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #5

daughart wrote: post #2

It would be great if this opened the door to sleep aids that activated the brain's natural sleep induction mechanisms, as opposed to today's sleep aids, which are basically just sedative/CNS depressant/muscle relaxers.

Well, this is what melatonin does and its OTC. My horrible insomnia was cured not by Ambien, but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it. Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever befo…

I concur with several others on this thread that in my experience, after years of trying different things, the only thing that worked was consistently waking up early everyday (~6am).

I also read in bed until I'm sleepy (usually within 30 minutes). The common literature on this subject says not to do that so I avoided for a long time. But one day I decided to try and it worked!

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#64

Post by ars » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:09 AM UTC

olh wrote: post #50

ars wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why do we dream "programming"? Because the "you" that is conscious is actually your game player in another world. So it's that "person" that is actually programming. Your body here is basically a robot. This would also explain why we can't figure out what consciousness actually is - if it's not physically in this world that would make it hard to figure out.

This theory makes the need to logout/sleep even more puzzling: if the need to logout is not attached to the robot then why did it biologically evolve on the robot in the first place?

That's the whole point - it's not the robot sleeping. For example people in a coma don't sleep.

> biologically evolve on the robot

I'm not aware of any multi-cellular organisms at all that don't sleep. None.

So if it did evolve it must have done so in a single celled organism that doesn't sleep, which of course makes no sense. (Why evolve the need for something you'll only need when multi-cellular?)

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#65

Post by ars » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:11 AM UTC

panic wrote: post #51

ars wrote: post #37

I have my own theory. We sleep because that's when we are logged out of the virtual game that this world is. I'm only semi-serious. But let's work with it. What if we research sleep right until there is nothing left to find out, and we since can't figure out any reason at all for it? Could we use that to postulate for a reason that is non-physical? Spiritual? Virtual reality? Something else?

When you're logged out of a virtual game, nobody can force you to log back in. But you can wake up someone who's sleeping.

Some people are hard to wake up.

Have you never set a game with alerts that make noise if something interesting is happening, so you rush back and play?

The delay in waking up is how long it takes the "player" to get back to his chair.

If the player did not go back that would be seen by us as fainting, or in longer situations, a coma.

Re: A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

#66

Post by SamBam » Mon, Aug 08, 2016, 3:15 PM UTC

thanksforcoming wrote: post #19

SamBam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pretty obvious" answers never hold up much to scrutiny, or the questions wouldn't be actively studied. Many animals are nocturnal. They eat and mate during the night, and sleep during the day. From your theory, what reason do they have to sleep during the day? They could be doing all sorts of productive things in the light -- more mating, making homes, defending themselves and their babies from predators, migrating,…

The parent comment only mentioned humans being diurnal, not other animals. There's a number of strong evolutionary forces that explain nocturnality: niche differentiation, crypsis, a predation arms-race, water conservation, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnality#Survival_adaptati...

I'm not sure your point about humans vs other animals.

Are you suggesting sleep evolved for a different reason in humans than it did for our ancestors and the millions of other species that sleep?