Tag: Sleep

A New Look at Biology, New Discoveries

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream… Or Not

You know those people who only need 4 hours of sleep a night, yet who are energetic to the point of making you feel exhausted just by seeing what they do in a day? Well, there’s an app for that. OK, not really, but there is a gene for that. It’s called DEC2 (also called BHLHE41), and the evidence for it is pretty convincing. The group that originally identified this gene even made mice with a mutation in the gene and the mice also became short sleepers, and at least one other group has identified mutations subsequently in the same gene in other families with short sleep phenomenon.

What does this gene do, can I have a copy of that mutation, you are asking yourself. Continue reading “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream… Or Not” →

A New Look at Biology, Drug Development, New Discoveries, Sleep

Being Sleepy and Tired

There is a fantastic post by luysii on his Chemiotics II blog. In it, he discusses his theory that senescent cell may be producing mediators that cause chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). I think it’s a fascinating idea.

CFS is a terrible disease, made worse by the fact that some physicians don’t believe that it exists. Trust me, it does.

An interesting things about the disease is that it tend to occur in high income countries, and almost never in developing countries, and that in my experience, it tends to occur in women from mid to higher socioeconomic strata. This is in contrast to fibromyalgia, which Continue reading “Being Sleepy and Tired” →