Friday, November 23, 2012

Sounds about Right

Need a Lot of Sleep? An Antidote for Hypersomnia 
Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have discovered that dozens of adults with an elevated need for sleep have a substance in their cerebrospinal fluid that acts like a sleeping pill.
...
The paper describes how samples of patients' cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) contain a substance that enhances the effects of the brain chemical GABA (gamma-amino butyric acid). GABA is one of the main inhibitory chemicals of the nervous system -- alcohol, barbituates and benzodiazepines all enhance the effects of GABA. In the laboratory, the size of the effect on GABA receptor function is more than twice as large in the hyper-sleepy patients, on average, than in control samples. "In some of the more severely affected patients, we estimated the magnitude of the GABA-enhancing effect as nearly equivalent to that expected for someone receiving sedation for outpatient colonoscopy," Rye says. "This is a level of impaired consciousness that many subjects had to combat on almost a daily basis in order to live their usual lives."
Well, this probably partially explains the effect of Xyrem.   It's a GABA blocker.

But I'll bet a thousand dollars whatever it is, it's related to gluten.  Either opioids or antibodies or insulin metabolism.  Been there, done that.

Update:  Cha ching.  I'm putting my money on insulin.  It seems to magnify the effects of GABA.
And for the record, I wrote to Dr. Rye and told him to look it up.