Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: how much sleep did you get last night? Seven and
Speaker 1: a half hours. It's pretty good. Yeah, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, eight is the that's the ballpark, that's clean
Speaker 1: living right there at eight. Right, that's what I aspire to.
Speaker 1: But I need that. What about you? Um, let's see twelve, two, three, four.
Speaker 1: I tend to get around like generally at my idea,
Speaker 1: it's like it's seven, but I feel much better when
Speaker 1: I get eight. Well, and it makes a huge difference, right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes I get six. In the past, I found that
Speaker 1: like I can sort of I can pull like one,
Speaker 1: like one night a week. I can stay up a
Speaker 1: little late, but then I need to make it out
Speaker 1: like I don't know, I used to it. It was different.
Speaker 1: You're younger, but well yeah, but but these days, yeah,
Speaker 1: I find myself getting seven, but eight would be gravy. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's this idea out there that eight hours is
Speaker 1: the ideal, or actually between six and eight hours sort
Speaker 1: of depends. Everybody is wired a little bit differently, and
Speaker 1: certainly melotonin levels are different depending on depends how much
Speaker 1: sleeping you're getting done on the train later on in
Speaker 1: the day, or or under your desk in a secret
Speaker 1: compartment that you've built that nobody can see that looks
Speaker 1: like cubicle but it's not. Yeah yeah, yeah, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that um that there's are these are standards.
Speaker 1: They even call the this sleep hygiene these days. But
Speaker 1: there's a really fascinating New York Times article, um actually
Speaker 1: New York Times magazine. It is called the sleep industrial Complex.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little bit more about this in
Speaker 1: a second, but sleep industrial complex, the sleep industrial complex,
Speaker 1: about this idea of sleep is being this you know,
Speaker 1: god given right of eight hours and this is the
Speaker 1: normalcy in this is sleep hygiene, and we should all
Speaker 1: order these two thou dollar beds so that we can
Speaker 1: sleep better because we spend half our lives sleeping. But
Speaker 1: before we go into that, I wanted to mention that
Speaker 1: we are of course talking about sleep, um this idea
Speaker 1: about whether or not in the future and the near
Speaker 1: future we will need as much of it and the
Speaker 1: reasons why. But before we go into the reasons why
Speaker 1: we may or may not need sleep. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the old days, the olden days of sleep. Well, sleep
Speaker 1: was invented and when no, it wasn't, and we've always
Speaker 1: we've always slept. So I mean that's the thing when
Speaker 1: when you when you first brought this up, like, what
Speaker 1: was what it sleep used to be? Like? My thought was, well,
Speaker 1: it was probably like it was now. You got tired
Speaker 1: in the evenings, maybe a little earlier, especially especially and
Speaker 1: say if you're you feel like an agrarian kind of
Speaker 1: environment going on, there's only so much you can do
Speaker 1: at night. You need to get early, so when it's
Speaker 1: too dark to work, you go to sleep. Or in
Speaker 1: like saying medieval city settings where you would have certain
Speaker 1: like curfews in place, you're not even you know, you
Speaker 1: can only live it up so much at night, so
Speaker 1: you might as well go to bed, right, Well, you
Speaker 1: don't have electricity, right, so, yeah, there's not a ton
Speaker 1: to do. Video games were primitive. There's a stick and
Speaker 1: dirt and then your candle run out anyway, so eventually
Speaker 1: you're tired of fighting the lights and you just go
Speaker 1: to sleep and you could get eight hours I would guess, right, well,
Speaker 1: what they're saying though, is that, um, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on the time of the year, you could have ten
Speaker 1: hours of sunlight in fourteen hours of darkness. And um.
Speaker 1: In this article that I talked about that just talked
Speaker 1: about the sleep industrial complex, Roger Ekra, professor of history
Speaker 1: at Virginia Tech, says that for many centuries, and perhaps
Speaker 1: back to Homer, Western society slept in two shifts because
Speaker 1: there was so much darkness right there, fourteen hours and
Speaker 1: you didn't have electricity. And he says that people went
Speaker 1: to sleep, got up in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: for an hour or so, and then went to sleep again. Thus,
Speaker 1: night quoting here divided into a first sleep in a
Speaker 1: second sleep, um. And this is where they have this intermission.
Speaker 1: And he says that there was an extraordinary level of
Speaker 1: activity during this intermission period. So it's not just like
Speaker 1: I woke up, I stumbled into the bathroom, or I
Speaker 1: stumbled into the kitchen and ate a chicken wing and
Speaker 1: then I went to sleep. No, it's like you're getting up,
Speaker 1: you're hitting the town for a couple of hours. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's just that people would get up and they tend
Speaker 1: to their animals, or they would do housekeeping, or they'd
Speaker 1: have sex, or they just lay in bed thinking, um,
Speaker 1: smoking a pipe. Pieces valid options, gossiping with bedfellows, because
Speaker 1: I remember this is back in the day, like you
Speaker 1: might be sleeping in a bed with six other people,
Speaker 1: not necessarily that that far away in some society. Like
Speaker 1: when I read Black Robe, which I'm sure I've mentioned
Speaker 1: here before, the awesome novel had to do with the
Speaker 1: Native American populations in the US, particularly hur On people,
Speaker 1: and then also Jess Wits. But but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of descriptions of the of the group's sleeping environments
Speaker 1: among the Hurran and and and and certainly, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's a communal experience and if people were waking up,
Speaker 1: you'd be able to chat a little, well, do it
Speaker 1: or smoke? You would just spoke. Or if you're Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: you would take a cold air bath, which means that
Speaker 1: he would read naked in a chair and he'd call
Speaker 1: it his cold air bath in the middle of the night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can kind of see that really well, right, Like
Speaker 1: for some reason then that's something that's easy to imagine.
Speaker 1: I always imagine him now as the version that we
Speaker 1: saw in the John Adams HBO mini series, played by
Speaker 1: that great actor whose name eludes me at the moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy. But anyway, they kind of they play up
Speaker 1: his his bodiness a little, not to like comic degrees,
Speaker 1: but to but to what feels like a more realistic degree.
Speaker 1: So I can imagine that Ben Franklin enjoying his cool
Speaker 1: air bath during That's exactly what I thought of a
Speaker 1: corpulent Ben Franklin. I have to say. Um So, anyway,
Speaker 1: that the idea here is that um sleep has not
Speaker 1: always done an unbroken block of six to eight hours,
Speaker 1: and that people have always sort of done different things
Speaker 1: with it. In fact, uh, there's no conclusive evidence, but
Speaker 1: it's thought that Leonardo da Vinci practice something called polyphasic sleep,
Speaker 1: and that's taking twenty to thirty minute naps every couple
Speaker 1: of hours throughout the day and the night, which you
Speaker 1: can actually see the advantages to that, right, because you
Speaker 1: kind of get refreshed at at intervals. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you like. I've never tried it, but certainly if
Speaker 1: I were to look at my own schedule, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I wake up, those first six hours are are
Speaker 1: optimal for me. That's when I'm gonna get my best
Speaker 1: writing done. That's when if I'm podcasting, that's when I
Speaker 1: need a podcast and am not in the PM, and
Speaker 1: then by the afternoon I'm having increasing difficulty stringing words
Speaker 1: together or remembering where I kept things. So it would
Speaker 1: it would seem logical that if I just increase my
Speaker 1: waking periods, I would increase my optimal thinking periods as well,
Speaker 1: if you had a balance of the two. Sure. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out, according to Eckerach, that slip disorders could
Speaker 1: be especially the ones that in which you wake up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and you have a
Speaker 1: hard time getting back to sleep. Um that this may
Speaker 1: actually not necessarily be a sign of being not being
Speaker 1: able to fall asleep again, but could be rooted in
Speaker 1: the more traditional pattern that we just spoke of, in
Speaker 1: which there are ten hours of daylight fourteen hours of
Speaker 1: darkness and people had those intermissions. M Now, I believe
Speaker 1: there was a sign felt episode where Cramer was going
Speaker 1: after Dilniana our DaVinci model and it ended up not
Speaker 1: working for him. Not to say that that is a
Speaker 1: clinical trial of of said sleep pattern, but but a
Speaker 1: number of viewers probably make that connection. Oh and by
Speaker 1: the way, Tom Wilkinson, the actor okay, okay, great well
Speaker 1: and aeravetic medicine to there. There's different um dosia's they
Speaker 1: call them, that rule different parts of the day. So
Speaker 1: there's this idea that certain does you would fall asleep
Speaker 1: easily and then you would wake up, and that there
Speaker 1: are some people who actually follow this. So these are
Speaker 1: like four hour blocks of time. So if this certain
Speaker 1: do show, which was more amenable to sleep, were to
Speaker 1: occur during the day, and then you would sleep during
Speaker 1: that time period. So they are all there are many
Speaker 1: different ideas of sleep and how to accomplish it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly, just in anyone's friend group, you can
Speaker 1: probably think of various people who are you know, night work.
Speaker 1: Like my sister for instance, she does she bakes beads
Speaker 1: for jewelry. Uh and uh she does that like exclusively
Speaker 1: in the wee hours of the morning and then sleeps
Speaker 1: late and uh and we are stays up at night
Speaker 1: and works on it and then sleeps rather late. Whereas
Speaker 1: I'm just the opposite of I'm gonna do something creative
Speaker 1: um or or an involve spot. It's going to have
Speaker 1: to happen in the a m SO, and you see
Speaker 1: people with drastic differences in that. I can't think of anyone.
Speaker 1: I've never met anyone who's like, yeah, middle of the day, Yeah,
Speaker 1: right off at eat a sandwich about three o'clock. That's
Speaker 1: when I was really yeah yeah. Um, alright, let's talk
Speaker 1: about why we need sleep. We've talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit before previous podcasts, but let's just sort of
Speaker 1: have a refresher. That newborn sleep up to twenty hours
Speaker 1: a day, um, and of course they need that because
Speaker 1: they're secreting growth hormones and all sorts of crazy things
Speaker 1: that are going on to help them grow. Um. And
Speaker 1: then us adults log between six to eight hours of sleep,
Speaker 1: and it is essential to mammals. Yeah. Sleep, just just
Speaker 1: a few bullet points here. Sleep gives the body a
Speaker 1: chance to repair muscles and other tissues to replace aging
Speaker 1: or dead cells. So it's the it's maintenance time in
Speaker 1: the old body. Sleep gives the brain a chance to
Speaker 1: organize in our archived memories, dreams or thought by some
Speaker 1: to be part of this process. We've discussed that before.
Speaker 1: The idea of the of dream that our dream cycle
Speaker 1: is a is a problem solving um space that happens
Speaker 1: at a at a subconscious level. Sleep lowers our energy consumption,
Speaker 1: so we need three meals a day rather than four
Speaker 1: or five. And since we don't do anything you know,
Speaker 1: in the dark anyway, we might as well turn off
Speaker 1: and save energy. That's, of course, going rolling back on
Speaker 1: older models of we're we're not nocturnal creatures. We can't
Speaker 1: see anything, so we're gonna as well shut down also
Speaker 1: um as um as as the the Wigham child points
Speaker 1: out in the Simpsons, sleep is where you're viking, So
Speaker 1: there's that. That's that's right, sleep perchance to dream. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the points back to the fact that
Speaker 1: we have this three pound a little you know, operating
Speaker 1: system that does take a lot of energy. And as
Speaker 1: you say, if we can turn off, then we can
Speaker 1: conserve that and we don't have to keep feeding that.
Speaker 1: So what happens when we we can't go to sleep, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's that's always been the problem. Because you can
Speaker 1: force yourself to stay up, be it out of sheer terror,
Speaker 1: out of by the use of natural or illicit um substances,
Speaker 1: or just sheer you know, intensity of thought. You you
Speaker 1: may be able to keep yourself to some degree awake
Speaker 1: and not also various medical conditions. Of course we'll do
Speaker 1: this as well. UM, but you met this one night
Speaker 1: of sleep, it's not going to kill you. You're generally
Speaker 1: gonna be irritable the next day. UH may slow you down.
Speaker 1: You become tired easily. Um. Or it's also if possibly
Speaker 1: would be totally wired because of adrenaline. Um, you're still
Speaker 1: just you know, pumping through it. Say you're running for
Speaker 1: your life from you know, monsters all night and then
Speaker 1: into the next day. UM. All right, if you missed
Speaker 1: two nights asleep, though, then it starts really kissing up
Speaker 1: catching up with you. Concentration becomes difficult, attention span falls, UM,
Speaker 1: Mistakes increase, like silly mistakes, even things that you do
Speaker 1: every day. You know, try download the dishwasher. You're gonna
Speaker 1: break glasses left and right, that kind of thing. After
Speaker 1: three days, though, that's when you start to hallucinate. Um,
Speaker 1: and clear thinking becomes impossible. Um. And with contin you know,
Speaker 1: you may start seeing spiders in the corners that aren't there.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually have experienced that before when my
Speaker 1: daughter is a newborn and being up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night with her so much, and at some
Speaker 1: point I remember hallucinating that the room was getting really
Speaker 1: tiny big, and that's when I was like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is you know, these are the effects of not being
Speaker 1: able to sleep, and it is not. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is one of those things that that a large percentage
Speaker 1: of Americans, um, and the rest of the world too,
Speaker 1: really uh actually happened to them as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: Americans get less than the generally recommended eight hours of
Speaker 1: sleep per night and then they suffer some type of
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation symptom. What's worth pointing out about the three
Speaker 1: days plus thing. Um, you were hallucinating a little bit,
Speaker 1: but you were still ground in reality. You were like
Speaker 1: I knew something was that you were like, the room
Speaker 1: is not really moving, or you might realize there aren't
Speaker 1: really ghost spiders crawling in the corners of my vision.
Speaker 1: But it can reach the point where you actually lose
Speaker 1: grasp of reality. Um. And we've we've had we've conducted
Speaker 1: experiments where rats forced to stay awake continuously eventually die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can live up to three years. But you're right,
Speaker 1: if you were to take two or three weeks and
Speaker 1: continuously deprive them of sleep, they would die. So we
Speaker 1: know obviously that this is something that we cannot go without,
Speaker 1: or can we That's the thing, because inevitably, I mean
Speaker 1: we we've all had that point be it. You know,
Speaker 1: especially if you if you've been in a college scenario,
Speaker 1: or you found yourself like dealing with a newborn or
Speaker 1: any kind of stressful, time consuming portion of your life
Speaker 1: feel or or maybe you just through the video game
Speaker 1: you want to play and you never have time for it,
Speaker 1: or hobby you want to pursue, or that book you
Speaker 1: want to write, and you find yourself sleepy and out
Speaker 1: of out of energy when you could work on it.
Speaker 1: You may think yourself, Man, if I, if I could
Speaker 1: just get rid of this sleep thing, then that would
Speaker 1: totally open up my day. I'd have half my life back,
Speaker 1: and I could use that to go after these various
Speaker 1: UH endeavors. Or certainly in military and scenarios, we've had
Speaker 1: situations where all right, we need to win this thing.
Speaker 1: We need these pilots to come in, fallow the planes
Speaker 1: and then go out again. But we need them to
Speaker 1: be able to fly the plane. We need them to
Speaker 1: have UH, to have that alertness and inability that is
Speaker 1: there when they first wake up in the morning. How
Speaker 1: can we sustain that. Yeah, let's talk more about the
Speaker 1: history of soldiers and stimulants, because that's a great example.
Speaker 1: You have people who are in high stakes situations there
Speaker 1: in different time zones, most of the time, they're in
Speaker 1: a different climate, they're under extreme stress, and sleep is
Speaker 1: a fleeting thing, right. There are times that you want
Speaker 1: to turn it on and there are times that you
Speaker 1: want to turn it off. Um And this I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. The number currently of writtle and adderal
Speaker 1: prescriptions written for active duty service members increased by nearly
Speaker 1: one thousand percent in five years from that's from thirty
Speaker 1: to UM. But so it decreased or has increased from
Speaker 1: three thousand to thirty two thousand and try Care Management Activity,
Speaker 1: which is an arm of the Department of Defense, says
Speaker 1: that this is because there have been increased diagnosis of
Speaker 1: a d h D. But then we know the military
Speaker 1: where he has had a long history of using stimulants
Speaker 1: to help keep troops alert and awake. And certainly, I
Speaker 1: mean you're dealing with military environments. You know, combat environments.
Speaker 1: It's it's ultimately a matter of life and death. So
Speaker 1: it's it's alright, it's hard to argue against the use
Speaker 1: of those those substances in these circumstances. I mean, if
Speaker 1: if you're looking at this this individual, is this individual
Speaker 1: is going out back into combats, going back out into
Speaker 1: a situation where he or she may be shot at
Speaker 1: or shot down, etcetera, then then how do you make
Speaker 1: the argument against giving them that chemical edge, or giving
Speaker 1: them the chemical edge to actually sleep and rest when
Speaker 1: they return with all of these thoughts still ringing in
Speaker 1: their head and all these fears and apprehensions. UM. I
Speaker 1: wanted to point out to that during the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: that US troops, troops were given amphetamines, and amphetamines worked
Speaker 1: throughout the braining to boost levels UM a range of neurotransmitters,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's pretty much speed, right, which would
Speaker 1: keep you very active and alert. And Nazis also gave
Speaker 1: it to their troops in the form of something called
Speaker 1: privatin okay the German infantry. Yeah, and um A provocil
Speaker 1: and motor finel our centrals, nervous system stimulants and those
Speaker 1: have been used by military pilots and special forces during missions. UM.
Speaker 1: The problem, of course, with all of this are the
Speaker 1: side effects. Provacil has side effects that include nervousness, insomnia, excitation, irritability, tremors, dizziness,
Speaker 1: and headaches. Uh So it's not the perfect drug here,
Speaker 1: and certainly it is a solution to some of the
Speaker 1: problems that exist in this environment. But when you know
Speaker 1: at what cost? Yeah, I mean because so certainly I
Speaker 1: think pilots that's a great example of this, because especially
Speaker 1: if you're dealing with flying along very long distance on
Speaker 1: a combat mission or what have you, you want them
Speaker 1: to have optimal performance for the entire time. But even
Speaker 1: with these these chemicals, you it's going to get increasingly
Speaker 1: shaky the more you push it out. It's like holding
Speaker 1: them a hold in yoga. That's how far removed him
Speaker 1: from combat scenarios, I guess. But but you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the longer you hold it the shaker, it's going
Speaker 1: to get to the point where no amount of chemical
Speaker 1: um aid is going to help you. Or so we thought, right,
Speaker 1: and we won't go into some of the instances, but
Speaker 1: there there have been some um some of the use
Speaker 1: of provocol and motor phenel in which some unfortunate instances
Speaker 1: have happened and people have wondered whether or not it's
Speaker 1: the side effects from the drug that that we're um
Speaker 1: you know, causing people to not think clearly or or
Speaker 1: having impaired thinking. So, uh, let's talk about In two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, h DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
Speaker 1: which comes up with some really cool things. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything from from from driverless cars to out I mean
Speaker 1: it really runs the gamut. Yeah. Uh, they in conjunction
Speaker 1: with UM with Department of Defense and Jerome Signal, professor
Speaker 1: of psychiatry at U c l A, came up with
Speaker 1: a nasal spray that would help create a sense of
Speaker 1: wakefulness and alertness without many side effects, which is this
Speaker 1: is a huge breakthrough. Yeah, I mean, the the idea
Speaker 1: is is pretty great. I mean they refer to it
Speaker 1: as a sleep replacement drug, which just sounds crazy. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sleep replacement. I mean it tends to
Speaker 1: go against everything that we've we've discussed so far, the
Speaker 1: idea that that's sleep is inevitable, sleep is mandatory. But
Speaker 1: if you could actually replace it with a drug, then
Speaker 1: what couldn't we do in the space of twenty four
Speaker 1: hours or forty eight hours or even longer. Alright, so
Speaker 1: check this out. There was a study of monkeys who
Speaker 1: were deprived of sleep for thirty the thirty six hours,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how they did that by the way,
Speaker 1: to like to just play loud music or like, you know,
Speaker 1: given the first five seasons of breaking bad. Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that'll do it right there. Um. And then those
Speaker 1: monkeys were given either orex in A or a sailine
Speaker 1: placebo before taking standard cognitive tests. And what they found
Speaker 1: is that the monkeys who are given arex in A
Speaker 1: in a nasal spray scored about the same as alert
Speaker 1: monkeys on cognitive tests, while the sailine control group was
Speaker 1: severely impaired. And so this is a study that was
Speaker 1: published in the December twenty six, two seven edition of
Speaker 1: the Journal of Neuroscience. It was found that O rex
Speaker 1: and A not only restored their cognitive abilities, but it
Speaker 1: made and this is huge, and made their brains look
Speaker 1: awake and pet scans as well. So there's evidence that
Speaker 1: it's not just that there's a certain level of alertness,
Speaker 1: but that they could have been firing on all cylinders.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back we'll keep rolling. We will stay alert,
Speaker 1: stay awake, and keep talking about the death of sleep
Speaker 1: here possibly all right, we're back, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about rex and a, this promising sleep replacement drug candidate,
Speaker 1: which do not go to your your pharmacy, Do not
Speaker 1: go to your doctor and ask for rex and a,
Speaker 1: becaun't buy it online. I'm sure something is available that
Speaker 1: is calling itself our x and a. UM. It's also
Speaker 1: called hypocretin. It's a neuropeptide hormone and it's produced in
Speaker 1: the hypothalamus, and it's what allows us to remain awake
Speaker 1: for a continuous chunk of time because our body basically
Speaker 1: releases our x and A throughout the day. So this
Speaker 1: is the interesting part is that UM. The reason that
Speaker 1: O x in A was discovered to help manipulate these
Speaker 1: different sleep states and wakeful states is because they noticed
Speaker 1: researchers noticed that people who have narcolepsy have trouble falling asleep. UH.
Speaker 1: And the reason they are having trouble falling sleep is
Speaker 1: because they lack O rex in A. This this wakefulness hormone.
Speaker 1: So rexin A is the finger of the brain poking
Speaker 1: you and keeping you awake during that meeting or that
Speaker 1: church sermon and uh, and people with narcolepsy don't have
Speaker 1: that finger to poke them in the shoulder. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because previously researchers were trying to treat sleep disorders
Speaker 1: by really inducing sleep at the right time, rather than
Speaker 1: tinkering with wakefulness. So sort of they took the opposite
Speaker 1: tact here, instead of like we're going to knock you
Speaker 1: out at thirty pm, let's actually look at what's going
Speaker 1: on in the brain. Yeah, yeah, so if so, the
Speaker 1: idea here is that if the deficit of ox and
Speaker 1: a makes people sleepy, adding it back into the brain
Speaker 1: would reduce its effects. So that's where you see something
Speaker 1: like the nasal spray becoming really effective because you're getting
Speaker 1: a shot of this orexin a, you are vanquishing the
Speaker 1: sleepies um with wakefulness, and so it becomes a really
Speaker 1: effective drug for or not politics as well, right, because
Speaker 1: it's inducing wakefulness. Now at the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: you have something called sero veccent, and this is a
Speaker 1: drug from Mark and it's still in trials, but what
Speaker 1: it's trying to do is block the receptors for rexin.
Speaker 1: So now they're saying okay, well let's not let o
Speaker 1: rexin attached to the receptors so that we can induce
Speaker 1: the sleepiness. Um, and you're essentially taking out the wakeful component. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is the the huge thing about it is
Speaker 1: it doesn't appear to have the hangover side effects that
Speaker 1: some sleep aid medications are reported to have. But it's
Speaker 1: still in trials and um, there's the idea that more
Speaker 1: research needs to to go on, obviously to make sure
Speaker 1: that the drug wouldn't inadvertently cause sleep state disassociations for
Speaker 1: your body later on the idea of being here that
Speaker 1: you're you're taking one pill to wake you up, one
Speaker 1: pill to put you down, and eventually everything's going to
Speaker 1: be out of whack. Yeah, that your body. It's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: now that I have been manipulated with with my receptors
Speaker 1: have been blocked here on the rex in a and
Speaker 1: sleepiness is has been induced later on in the days,
Speaker 1: my body going to try to make up for it.
Speaker 1: Is there a possibility so far with the drug trials
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to be the case, but you still
Speaker 1: would want to know what the long term effects would
Speaker 1: be for both the super accent which would help you sleep,
Speaker 1: and for the nasal spray um, which would inhibit sleep
Speaker 1: and create wingfulness. You know, that's the question that it
Speaker 1: comes down to, Um, how will this be used for
Speaker 1: the general public? The nasal spray um? You know? Well
Speaker 1: gamers just the sniffing it for hours a day? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: party yours really because that the people people are partying
Speaker 1: on nine anyway. But and if this improves one's optimal
Speaker 1: partying ability, then then yeah, it becomes you can see
Speaker 1: that becoming a hot thing. But I mean it sounds
Speaker 1: like sniffable red bull to me. Yeah, and to say
Speaker 1: nothing about the potential complications of combining this with any
Speaker 1: other a number of stimulants or or or other medications.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, the jury is definitely out, but it
Speaker 1: is what we'll do with it and then what the
Speaker 1: various complications could be. It's a fascinating question though, about
Speaker 1: whether or not you could restore your cognitive functions to
Speaker 1: a to the wakeful state that you naturally would have
Speaker 1: and be able to avoid sleep. I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: going to get the cell uh rejuvenation that you would
Speaker 1: in a deep sleep. Yeah. Also, I mean you need
Speaker 1: your muscle repair to take place, aging dead cells to
Speaker 1: be tended to. So yeah, it seems like all, I mean,
Speaker 1: all that is going to catch up with you. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to use this to stay awake indefinitely
Speaker 1: or not without severe consequences. But again, I find it
Speaker 1: fascinating from the perspective of being able to manipulate our
Speaker 1: our wakeful states and our sleep states. And you know
Speaker 1: is they're going to be a drug that is the
Speaker 1: on the other end of the spectrum that makes you
Speaker 1: go to sleep so that you can manipulate, uh, that
Speaker 1: you know, your sleep activities and your wakefless activities whenever
Speaker 1: you want. Yeah, I mean I wonder if we could
Speaker 1: reach the point where I like I've also I also remember,
Speaker 1: in addition to having thoughts of what if I didn't
Speaker 1: have to sleep, wouldn't life be easier? You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to buy a bed, you know, do this, that and
Speaker 1: the other. But I've also had those times where I thought,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be nice if I could just stockpile some sleep,
Speaker 1: stay up for a certain period of time, or I
Speaker 1: could stay up for four days and just sleep the
Speaker 1: weekend away into a certain extent. That's how it works
Speaker 1: in terms of having to pay back what you take
Speaker 1: away from your sleep cycle. But if you could actually
Speaker 1: do this at a chemical level with and you know,
Speaker 1: and and at a hormone level with these substances, then
Speaker 1: perhaps we would reach the point where someone is taking
Speaker 1: a X and A to stay awake for say four
Speaker 1: days of work during the week, and then counter countering
Speaker 1: that with with other medications to sleep it out for
Speaker 1: the weekend. Or if you're just having a commute and
Speaker 1: you artificially, um, make yourself fall into a sleep pattern.
Speaker 1: So if you're like commuting on Marta for instance, on
Speaker 1: the train system and you can catch minutes, yeah you can.
Speaker 1: And then if you don't have any cash on you
Speaker 1: when you wake up, well there you have it, um,
Speaker 1: something to sleep on, something to sleep on or not
Speaker 1: sleep on, as it may work out. Um. It reminded me,
Speaker 1: of course we got this title from from death. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a great parton Makebath where Matbeth says,
Speaker 1: methought I heard a voice cry, sleep no more. Macbeth
Speaker 1: does murder sleep, the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up,
Speaker 1: the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each day's life,
Speaker 1: sore Labour's bath, balm of hurts, minds, great Nature's second course,
Speaker 1: chef nourisher in Life's Feast, And Lady Macbeth says, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? And Thenbeth says, still it cried sleep
Speaker 1: no more to all the house. Glamis hath murdered sleep
Speaker 1: been there for cart Or shall sleep no more? Macbeth
Speaker 1: shall sleep no more. So, of course Macbeth is rather
Speaker 1: stressed out during most of this, and that's what's what's
Speaker 1: keeping him awake, all these worries about what he's done
Speaker 1: and what he's gonna have to do and uh and
Speaker 1: and what the toll is going to be at the end.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the the idea that Macbeth, you know,
Speaker 1: as as usual, Shakespeare manages a word at best, but
Speaker 1: it's talking about sleep. Is this the sleep that knits
Speaker 1: up the raveled sleeve of care? I really like that.
Speaker 1: So what happens when we when we banish it, when
Speaker 1: we murder sleep? When we stay unraveled? So I am
Speaker 1: sure you guys and gals have some some sleep related
Speaker 1: tidbits to share with us about either about legitimate problems
Speaker 1: we've had with with sleep, or times when you've really
Speaker 1: pushed yourself to stay awake for an extended period of time,
Speaker 1: and pent or or Ben pushed to stay away for
Speaker 1: extended period of time. Uh, what was that like? What
Speaker 1: were the what strengths did you find yourself flowing with?
Speaker 1: What what negative impact did it have on your wakeful state?
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear about all of that. And certainly,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts about the potential of being able
Speaker 1: to take a sleep replacement truck? How do you think
Speaker 1: that would change your life? How do you think it
Speaker 1: would change cultures as we know it would it? I
Speaker 1: don't know would you banish sleep to get half your
Speaker 1: life back or do you feel like you'd be losing
Speaker 1: the best half of your of your life because let's
Speaker 1: face it, sleep is awesome? And would you take air
Speaker 1: baths a lot? Do you take newd air baths in
Speaker 1: the in the night? Let us know about that as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's call over the road of it real quick and
Speaker 1: just do one quick listener mail. All right, here's one
Speaker 1: from Don Don Wrightson and says, Hello, Robert and Julie,
Speaker 1: thank you for taking on breastfeeding as a scientific topic.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that this topic will generate lots of
Speaker 1: mail for you on both sides of the issue. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to me how something so natural and so logical, frankly,
Speaker 1: is rebuked by so many. Just yesterday, I was excited
Speaker 1: to see that a shopping mall had designated nursing rooms,
Speaker 1: even uh if the sign for the room featured an
Speaker 1: illustration of the baby bottle half full of milk. I
Speaker 1: was amazed to learn that some men are able to breastfeed.
Speaker 1: Imagine if this were the norm, I would be interested
Speaker 1: to see this develop, especially since men strutted around shirtless
Speaker 1: in public so shamelessly. And this is something that when
Speaker 1: I was talking to my wife about about about some
Speaker 1: of this, and she was like, yeah, it's like, you'll,
Speaker 1: you know, the woman takes her has her top off,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's a scandal. But you'll see
Speaker 1: the most grotesque men walking around with their shirts off
Speaker 1: and it's no big deal. Yeah, it does kind of
Speaker 1: buggle the mind. And then Don continues on the topic
Speaker 1: of performance art, which was another episode we did. I
Speaker 1: wanted to draw your attention to a performance artist named
Speaker 1: Chris Burden, if you haven't already heard of him. I
Speaker 1: saw one of installation of these installations in college. Apparently
Speaker 1: he crucified himself to the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle,
Speaker 1: had someone shoot him in the arm, and also had
Speaker 1: a piece where he stood backstage and attempted to breathe
Speaker 1: water pretty five minutes. Interesting stuff. He bought the great
Speaker 1: work done. We'll have to check that out. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard of the the bull sucking beetle thing rings a bell,
Speaker 1: but I know I've seen some stuff about the shooting
Speaker 1: as art Chris Burden all right, well, um, yeah, so
Speaker 1: let us know your thoughts on sleep replacement drugs, on
Speaker 1: breastfeeding in public, which, by the way, we have received
Speaker 1: a lot of comments from there, and I have to
Speaker 1: say that all of them have been really positive. I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody's very insightful, very insightful. Yeah. Uh. And if you
Speaker 1: have any thoughts, obviously about performance art, let us know.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook and Tumbler, where we
Speaker 1: are stuff to blow your mind on both of those,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter we are we are blow the mind
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line and blow
Speaker 1: the mind at Discovery dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
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