Drugs Eradicate the Need For Sleep

MattSparkes writes "New Scientist is running an article on lifestyle drugs that claim to help you function on little or no sleep. I'm dubious, but the interviewee in the article claims they work well. 'Yves (not his real name), a 31-year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'" But, sleep is where I'm a Viking!

Comments

Not good.....

[BWJones]

Speaking as a scientist who used to study sleep and sleep disorders, I have to say this is troubling. Sleep has evolved for a purpose and a number of studies have shown that sleep is necessary or crucial to consolidate long term memories, stabilize mood and more. If you are a simple automaton in your job, then *perhaps* you might be able to get away with something like modafinil for short periods of time, but if your job requires thought and the use of memory and higher cognitive function, then you are doing yourself a disservice by taking these drugs. I worry that the long term effects will not become apparent until years later, like I suspect might happen with PDE inhibitors like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

Humans have evolved an organized architecture of sleep where we progress through a number of stages of sleep. In other words, sleep is an active state that is not homogenous in that there are five generally accepted states of sleep separate from consciousness. Stages 1 and 2 are light sleep whereas 3 and 4 are deeper, more restful states of sleep with lower brain metabolic rates and more cortical synchronization. Stage 5 or REM sleep is actually a very active stage of sleep with very high metabolic requirements rivaling that or exceeding wakefulness and its thought that REM sleep may be necessary for memory consolidation. The trick is that the architecture of sleep is broken up into various stages and you do not really approach the most intense REM periods until after you have progressed back and forth through some of the other stages including a more brief period of REM sleep earlier in the night. So, the most intense REM period is late into sleep and often early in the morning. If you short change yourself of the other sleep periods, you reduce the quantity and quality of your REM sleep period.

Re:Not good.....

[Hoi Polloi]

I've always wondered about the need for sleep. For an animal to allow itself to go into an extremely vulnerable state every day for hours it must have a VERY good reason for doing so. The fact that sleep has been passed along in our genes even in the face of natural selection (sorry creationist museum) shows this. I think we've barely penetrated the real reasons for sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[Golthur]

Not that I necessarily agree with this, but Carl Sagan hypothesized in Dragons of Eden that mammals were originally nocturnal, and evolved sleep so as to be still (and thus more difficult to spot) during the day when the reptiles (which dominated all niches when mammals first evolved) were active.

Re:Not good.....

[geekoid]

Some people only need 4-5 hours of sleep a night.
Why is that?
I also notice that some powerfully motivated people only need 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Martha Stewart, nepolean, Da vinci, etc . . . Is there a corolation?

I would love a drug that allowed me to be fully functional on only 4 hours of sleep a night.

Re:Not good.....

[qwijibo]

There are a lot of jobs that don't require the use of memory or higher cognitive function. This could help people who are working two jobs. I used to live in an apartment with a neighbor who needed to work two jobs to support his wife and disabled daughter. He was taking speed to be able to do it. I introduced him to pure caffeine as a substitute and he was glad to have the strong stimulant (500mg per dose, not diluted, not time released) without the cost and negative aspects of speed.

These types of drugs always strike me as solving a non-problem, but there are people who are willing to live with the side effects.

Re:Not good.....

[lawaetf1]

I couldn't agree more. I'm not a sleep scientist but find it alarming how willing people are to submit to the "hey, it works!" credo as if they were putting some new additive in their car's fuel tank.

The problem is:

So how does modafinil work? "No one really knows," admits Vaught.

Of course should this drug turn out to cause major depression later in life I'm sure the pharma world will be waiting with open arms and a handful of prescriptions. It's pitiful how quality of life, savoring being human (yes, damn it, savoring being an absolute loaf for a day or month or year), is so readily sacrificed for the treadmill of modernity.

Work harder, get a bonus, go ski with friends in Aspen! Buy an Audi! Vacation in Bali! You too can have "it" if you peddle just a little harder!!

Pass me a good book and a sunset any day. I used to subscribe to the rat race and am eternally grateful that I learned early on what a farce it is. Sadly this country's economic model is based on the "more, more" mindset and, almost necessarily, popular culture reinforces it at every turn.

Re:Not good.....

[Mprx]

REM sleep can't be necessary for memory consolidation, because monoamine oxidase inhibitors eliminate REM sleep, but not not impair memory even if used for a long time. Furthermore, this is a there is a case of brain injury which eliminated REM sleep but did not impair memory. http://www.npi.ucla.edu/sleepresearch/science/1058 full.html

Re:Not good.....

[tlhIngan]

I've always wondered about the need for sleep. For an animal to allow itself to go into an extremely vulnerable state every day for hours it must have a VERY good reason for doing so. The fact that sleep has been passed along in our genes even in the face of natural selection (sorry creationist museum) shows this. I think we've barely penetrated the real reasons for sleep.

In fact, there are animals that don't appear to sleep, but actually do (dolphins, for example). What they do is sleep half their body and brain at a time. So there's obviously some benefit, as they've evolved the necessity to remain awake, but still get the sleep they need. (Unless it really happens to be some anomaly of evolution (another strike against creationism), like the appendix or spleen, that affects basically the entire population of living creatures). But I would think the dolphins proved otherwise, since they'd be the first to do away completely with sleep.

But a concern is still the long term side effects. By playing with stuff like this, would it lead to mental insanity later on due to paranoia or schizophrenia? We are, after all, playing with the mental state of mind (I'm sure tired muscles still remain tired even after popping the pills, even though the brain says it's fresh). The fact that the miliary trials concluded that it's only useful to about 48 hours wakefulness seems to imply that it doesn't reduce the need for sleep, just reduces the feelings of the need for sleep/sleepiness. We may end up with a population of zombies in a decade or two's time.

Anyhow, when did pill-popping become fashionable? I fear the day where it's "uncool" to not stick some drug in you as part of your daily routine in order to get through the day (as opposed to treating disease). Or the "there's a drug for everything" mentality.

Re:Not good.....

[amliebsch]

It does seem severely evolutionarily disadvantageous, doesn't it? Honest question, for anybody who knows: what is the lowest order of animal life that requires sleep? Eukaryotes don't sleep, do they? Do worm? Jellyfish? Is there some connection between higher-order brain activity and the need to sleep, and does it differ by species?

Re:Not good.....

[BWJones]

Some people only need 4-5 hours of sleep a night.
Why is that?

There can be some play in actual sleep requirements. Whereas most people need 8-9 hours of sleep per night, in long term situations, you can "economize" your sleep by appearing to make it more efficient in that latencies to certain periods of sleep may be reduced over time. But like any other economizing you see in life/financials etc...etc...etc... there are tradeoffs. For instance, I typically get about 4-5 hours of sleep per night during the week, but it does catch up with me and I have to once or twice a week get a full nights sleep to recover or there is a price to pay and I suspect that those who claim they only *need* 4-5 hours of sleep per night are doing much the same thing as I am. There are very few people in the world who have been truly documented to maintain lifestyles where they get much less sleep than on average and to remain effective long term, you need your sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[Josh Lindenmuth]

You have excellent points. Unfortunately, now that many advertising restrictions on drugs have been removed, the drug industry can effectively push drugs onto Americans without rational voices such as your own being fairly considered. Combine this with human nature to succeed and excel relative to one's peers, and you have the possibility for us to quickly go down the path of re-engineering ourselves for excellence.

The idea of everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week, and never getting sick may sound great to some, but where does it stop? After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?

This may seem far removed from sleep drugs, but I think it is a natural progression ... we are gaining the technology to enhance ourselves, and it will be a game of constant one-upmanship. Ethical discussions will prevent us from moving too fast, but I fear these concerns would have no impact on a slow progression towards turning ourselves into something unrecognizable as human by today's standards.

Re:Not good.....

[mattwarden]

I worry that the long term effects will not become apparent until years later, like I suspect [utah.edu] might happen with PDE inhibitors like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

Well, I guess if you're going to take away my PDE inhibitors, I might as well sleep anyway.

Re:Not good.....

[spiritraveller]

I also notice that some powerfully motivated people only need 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Martha Stewart...

Uhmmm.... motivated? Yes. Always the best judgment? Perhaps not.

Having a good night's sleep definitely helps me make the right decisions.

Maybe Martha should go back to eight hours a night.

Re:Not good.....

[BWJones]

Actually, you *are* a eukaryote and most of us posting here on Slashdot are with the exception of those that have foed me I suspect. :-)

Seriously though, worms, jellyfish and other "lower" invertebrates do exhibit periods of inactivity as do even prokaryotes such as bacteria. This period of "inactivity" is often crucial for normal physiological processes to occur. The important thing to note here is that through evolution, "higher" organisms appear to have accumulated a number of circadian clocks related to a variety of physiological functions and the "higher" up an organism is, the more clocks for various functions are accumulated.

Re:Not good.....

[BWJones]

But other studies have indicated increased performance in those subjects allowed REM sleep versus those subjects who have been selectively deprived of REM sleep. Other studies still have shown a reduction (higher efficiency) in brain metabolism in those subjects performing tasks who have been allowed REM sleep versus those other subjects who have been selectively sleep deprived. I am on a very narrow connection here and out of time for posting for now or I would find those references for you. But a simple Medline search should bring them up.

Re:Not good.....

[udderly]

My brother-in-law, in trying to cultivate his superman status, claims that he only needs 4-5 hours of sleep per night. But everyone who knows him knows that he goes into a semi-comatose state for 24 hours once per week. No real savings there:
6 nights x 4.5 hours = 27 hours
1 days x 24 hours = 24 hours
Total = 51 hours/week

51 hours/7 days = 7.29 hours per day (just like the rest of us)

Re:Not good.....

[donnyspi]

Taking 500mg of caffeine has short- and long-term side effects of its own.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

, like the appendix or spleen

The appendix and spleen are NOT vestigial organs. While you can survive without them, your immune system is stronger if you keep them.

You can survive without your right arm, therefore it's vestigial, correct?

Statements like that (e.g., the appendix and spleen do not perform necessary functions) make evolutionists look stupid. Please research physiology before you try to prove evolution with misguided "facts."

Re:Not good.....

[shotgunsaint]

Yes, from what I understand, humans and other creatures run on sort of a "sleep deficit", where if need be, you can stay active on less sleep, drawing on "sleep reserves". This adds more credence to my theory, "You can't give yourself energy, you're just borrowing it from the future."

Re:Not good.....

[LWATCDR]

And people worry about GM food and crop!
Of all the things people worry about messing with this seems one of the most dangerous at least on an indvidual basis.

Re:Not good.....

[Hitto]

You know what the saddest thing is? Most people will think you're not leading a "normal" life if you don't try and keep up with the joneses. Because not living a 9-to-6 life is considered "not serious". I stepped out of the fucking rat race a few months ago, and I wish I'd done that *years* earlier.

Re:Not good.....

[ArikTheRed]

My grandmother actually lived her whole adult life on only 3 hours a night. She went to bed at 2am every night, and work up at 5am. It was crazy, and not at all what she wanted - however, she was not an insomniac nor was she tired throughout the day. She visited several specialists, but no one knew why she didn't need to sleep... man, I wish I inherited that.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyhow, when did pill-popping become fashionable?"

The 60's.

Re:Not good.....

[Cemu]

And yet we snore, toss and turn, twitch, and sometimes talk in our sleep. Nothing says easy meal more than a loud unconscious mammal.

Re:Not good.....

[Xtravar]

Actually, an animal that doesn't run around looking for food all 24 hours is more likely to survive, since it isn't putting itself at risk so much. Think about it- you're actually cutting vulnerable time in half, and perhaps shifting your sleep schedule to the opposite of your predators.

Re:Not good.....

[jeffy210]

towards turning ourselves into something unrecognizable as human by today's standards.

Playing devil's advocate here: And the problem with this is? Isn't it in man's nature to attempt to improve themselves? Assuming the negative impacts are not great, what is wrong with us having an extra limb (don't know the benefits, just for sake of argument)? It's just a natural process of evolution. We look nothing like the creatures we evolved from, but that is because our form is functional for what we do. In the future, this form may not be the most functional (i'd argue it's not right now, but all things take time).

Re:Not good.....

[lawpoop]

I've wondered about it too, and then I got to wondering just how vulnerable a sleeping animal is. If you're about and about, you're making noise, being visible, creating a scent trail. If you're well hidden, such as in an underground den, you can pretty much go unmolested by any animal that might try to eat you. If an animal tries to dig you out, you have plenty of advance warning. Consider how many animals hibernate during the winter. For a prey animal, being out and about is the vulnerable period.

Re:Not good.....

[amliebsch]

Ah, yes, I meant prokaryote of course, thank you for the correction.

So, is the theory that sleep is evolutionarily explained by the fact that all (animal?) orders require some restorative periods of inactivity, and thus the higher orders have retained mutations that enforce a period of inactivity? This would make sense inasmuch as it would prevent beings that have developed an ego from driving themselves to exhaustion. On the other hand, there is much more going on in the brain than mere unconsciousness during periods of sleep, and even assuming it is true that animals with no brain to speak of still need periods of rest, there is apparently still something more going on in the brain during sleep that mere unsonsciousness doesn't provide. The alternative, I suppose, is that this is merely a secondary effect of the mechanisms which evolved to enforce periods of rest.

Really fascinating stuff to speculate about - I look forward to real answers.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Medicine is all about intervening with the natural body's actions. Intervening with sleep may be worrisome, but unless we research it and develop a cure, we're stuck with sleeping.

Re:Not good.....

[JaWiB]

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_jellyfish the Box jellyfish does sleep

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard it theorized that the evolutionary usefulness of sleep is that staying awake constantly would require much more energy. Laying still in a bed for a third of the day saves a lot of energy that would otherwise have to be sought out.

Re:Not good.....

[mikael]

Apparently (acccording to our family doctor), getting sleep between the hours of 2.00am and 4.00am are the most important hours. Not sure if that is due to the rotation of the Earth/Sun (maybe there are fewer cosmic rays at this time?), or relative to the internal biological clock.

Re:Not good.....

[Hachey]

Actually as you get older your body requires less sleep. Kinda weird, but I guess it doesn't have to be so primed as it used to need to...

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to truely eliminate the need for sleep, you'd have to recreate these functions while awake. I've always thought the need for sleep in humans was a great arguement for evolution, since a creater surely could have designed our brain with a portion specifically to calm our mood and process long-term memories without sleeping - a dual core version of our brian one like our current waking brain, and one a version of our sleeping brain, each smaller without the need to fulfill both functions. Such a brain may simply be too complex to evolve in one step, or (as others have suggested) sleep may be vestigual from when mammels may have needed to hide all day anyway.

Anyway, there could be other, better, ways to mimic the functions of sleep. You could probably cut the time needed for sleep in half, or even do as some other animals and just have a period of reduced activity... 4 hours with half your brain off could probably get what we need done.

Re:Not good.....

[LordPhantom]

Yes, because it's not like she's made any bad decisions recently or anything.....

Re:Not good.....

[elmaxxgt]

So yes, sleep makes us shiny happy people.

Re:Not good.....

[nschubach]

It still doesn't explain bad dreams and those of us that tend to move while sleeping. ;)

Re:Not good.....

[avajcovec]

We may end up with a population of zombies in a decade or two's time.

HAAHAHAHA!

What? You weren't joking? Look around you.

Re:Not good.....

[hey!]

In support of the nocturnal mammal evolution theory, our vision system has only three colors whereas most non-mammals have four. Birds that appear dull grey are sometimes brightly colored to others of their speices, because of their superior color vision. Losing a color, however, makes more room for light sensitive, b&w sensing rods.

With respect to the risks of sleep -- perhaps. It may be that specializing for night or day is a better overall strategy than trying to be able to operate around the clock. Maybe you're a daytime animal that relies on speed. If you can't see at night that speed is less useful. Maybe you're a nighttime animal that relies on stealth. That stealth is impaired during the day. So, even without sleep, you'd be looking for a safe place to den up during your off time.

Re:Not good.....

[Doctor Memory]

One thing I've noticed (which may or may not be real) is that my daughter seems to grow in her sleep. She'll enter a period (usually days) of increased appetite and activity, then one night she'll be very sleepy and go to bed early and I'll swear the next morning she's taller. She also has a definite decrease in stomach size, although whether this is related to fat-burning or an overall increase in body size I couldn't say.

Again, all apochyphal information, I haven't actually done before-and-after measurements. Still, there's a noticable difference, and after the growth spurt her appetite and activity level return to normal. So sleep may be a necessary component of the body's growth/repair mechanisms. It would be interesting to see if people who take this sleep-counteracting compound take longer to heal.

Re:Not good.....

[zippthorne]

Why would you want to sleep while things that like to eat you are awake and prowling about?

Re:Not good.....

[Vellmont]

Hmm.. well I think what the GP was asking was more specific to REM sleep. Perhaps what we call "sleep" is really a collection of different processes that serve different purposes (I'm guessing that's already been shown). You've already talked about processing long-term memories. Do we know how low this aspect of sleep goes down into organism complexity? I know dogs dream.. how about birds or reptiles?

Also, what else occurs during sleep to the rest of the body (other than the brain). Is there some greater immune response? Re-charging of different systems? If people didn't sleep and just took this pill to make their minds FELT like they slept, would people be more prone to illness, disease, etc?

Re:Not good.....

[Artifakt]

500 mg is about equivalent to 10 cups of instant coffee, or 5-6 of fresh ground drip brewed.
Suddenly going to this will leave a person needing to drink more water to offset dehydration, and for obvious reasons, taking lots of pee breaks. The body will adjust on the dehydration issue in about 1-2 months, but until that point, the user is at increased risk of heatstroke, particularly while active in hot conditions. Going on and off caffeine (like not guzzleing it on the weekends) will lengthen this period of adatation. Side effects will also likely include headaches from withdrawl, irritability, and twitches. Unless you are one of that very rare breed who has what they sometimes call gunfighter's nerves, this level of caffeine use will impair some fine motor movements with twitching. However, none of this appears nearly as bad as a drug such as Methamphetamine - not even close. If somebody really kicked meth by overusing caffeine (as per this thread), they have probably added decades to their lives.

Re:Not good.....

[joss]

> If you are a simple automaton in your job, then *perhaps* you might be able to get away with something like modafinil for short periods of time, but if your job requires thought and the use of memory and higher cognitive function, then you are doing yourself a disservice by taking these drugs.

Although I'm sure you didnt really mean this, its a telling sentance. Even if your job doesnt require much higher cognitive function, in fact probably especially then, you would be better off with a capacity for higher cognitive function. A lot of people take their jobs far too seriously. I know people who only drink coffee during the week "otherwise it loses effectiveness". Ie, they spend their weekends semi-comatose in order to function better at their jobs. After thinking about this for about 30 seconds I decided to only drink coffee during the weekend [this was back when I worked for other people]. This new drug is almost certainly a more subtle variation on caffine.. ie something to help turn people into semi-brainless automata whose only purpose in life is to increase shareholder value. The difference here is it doesnt make them feel shitty, but like you I would bet big money that they are losing something somewhere.

Re:Not good.....

[amliebsch]

I guess it boils down to this:

Is the requirement of sleep enforced by our brains because it is
(a) an irreducibly necessary part of living for physiological or neurochemical reasons, like breathing, or
(b) a behavior that was evolutionarily advantageous in the wild?

If (a), then these kinds of drugs are very troubling. If (b), then I would probably have no more qualms taking these than, say, a pain-killer.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody really knows exactly how aspirin or penicillin work, either.

Re:Not good.....

[khedron the jester]

The spleen functions in the destruction of old red blood cells, but what exactly does the appendix do? I am only a (English) sixth former, so I don't learn things like that, and the Wikipedia article says little. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spleen

Re:Not good.....

[93 Escort Wagon]

Most (all?) rodents sleep in short bursts rather than one long period, at least in the wild. Makes sense when you're near the bottom of the food chain.

Of course if you've ever owned a hamster, you know the domesticated ones seem to sleep all the bloody time...

Re:Not good.....

[Frangible]

Exactly. Sleep-cheating drugs are nothing new-- look at methamphetamine. It's about 100 years old and is very effective, moreso than modafinil, for treating narcolepsy. People stay up for over two weeks with it (nevermind 48 hours!) but after a point an interesting thing happens where the brain hemispheres start taking turns shutting down and going into REM sleep. To the user, half their brain is dreaming and the other half awake, leading to an odd fused state of hallucinations that cannot be distinguished from reality. It's interesting to note this same behavior happens in some mammal (I don't recall which) that naturally does not sleep.

Beyond the acute effects though most mammals pushed through drugs like meth to avoid sleep simply die in studies after a month. The circadian cycle is needed for proper homeostasis. Sleep deprivation causes symptoms of ADHD (ironically, treated with stimulants), obesity via lower leptin and higher ghrelin levels, and a very nasty cycle of altered immune, inflammatory and glial response.

One other interesting thing to note is that the human circadian cycle specifically tracks dawn and dusk, via the CLOCK genes mPer1 and mPer2 -- mPer1 being dawn and mPer2 being dusk. If there is no gradual "dusk" period before sleep, direct changes in gene expression -- outside of sleep deprivation -- result in a persistently lowered level of tyrosine hydroxylase, interfering with dopamine levels. Dopamine is of course a neurotransmitter associated with motivation, goal seeking behavior, wakefulness, attention, etc. So therefore perish the dusk, perish the dopamine. And yet this commonly happens -- artificial lighting, computer / TV screens, etc right up to the moment of sleep destroy melatonin production and any sort of proper expression of mPer2 activity. Over time this results in low cortisol and catecholamine levels during the day (fatigue), higher levels at night (as the melatonin/hormonal peaks become disturbed), and increased hunger/activity during the missing dusk period, as you in essence train the natural oscillation to favor alertness at that time -- when it cannot be sustained.

Taking stimulants, be they modafinil, the neurotoxic ampakines, or amphetamine, only partially reverses some of these things. They increase neurotransmitter and cortisol levels -- but also do this when their levels should be lower! Chronic levels of cortisol alters body composition to favor muscle catabolism (breakdown), fat retention, annihilation of the thyroid hormone T3 into reverse T3 thus fucking up thermogenesis and the metabolism, and causing atrophy of the hippocampus and disruption of memory. This also results in suppression of the immune system, increased inflammatory response, increased stress/anxiety, etc etc.

Do any of these things sound like "happiness" you would take a pill for? Shut down the computer and TV, and artificial lighting sources at least an hour before bed. Relax, in dim light. Train yourself with a normal schedule in sync with the sun. You'll have greater alertness during the day, lower hunger, higher energy, better memory, and sleep better.

We are a nation of stimulus junkies, always wanting to be entertained by something novel, with no thought for relaxation, rest, or recovery. When our novelty seeking behaviors disrupts our normal diurnal behaviors, the answer isn't to take drugs and start the cycle anew, but to perform these behaviors in moderation and balance.

Try turning off your electronic shit a bit early tonight and relaxing before sleep at a normal, consistent time. In a week, you'll be surprised at the huge difference it makes.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Utah!? No man, BYU all the way this year!

Re:Not good.....

[khedron the jester]

Laying still in a bed for a third of the day saves a lot of energy that would otherwise have to be sought out.

...during the extra third of a day that you are awake?

Re:Not good.....

[nschubach]

Hell I get on average 6 hours during the week then end up sleeping upwards of 10 hours on the weekends after some long Fridays. You eventually get the sleep in, but it comes at a later time. Perhaps a much later time when you put to sleep for good. (shrug)

Re:Not good.....

[joss]

> almost certainly a more subtle variation on caffine

To clarify: I didnt mean similar chemically or physiologically just similar sociallogically.

Re:Not good.....

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I fear the day where it's "uncool" to not stick some drug in you as part of your daily routine in order to get through the day

Coffee, anyone?

Re:Not good.....

[unPlugged-2.0]

Hmm you make good points but not all of them are correct. Human sleep has evolved based on the culmination of past requirements for survival. This meant that not being out at night was most necessary for surviving the predators of the past. Now there are obviously a lot of other factors that come into this such as the earth's magnetic field and also our body's own circadian rhythm which is tied up with other factors most of which are genetic.

Also in terms of the stages of sleep mainly REM that is not always the way the body needs to progress through the phases. There is a method of sleeping called polyphasic sleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep which can actually change the cycles and steps needed to get to REM sleep. Famous people such as DaVinci and Buckminster Fuller have professed to being on this pattern for years.

Also I know this works because I have actually tried it for 2 months as an experiment. If work permitted napping during the day I would still be on it but unfortunately it does not. There is a great Yahoo group called the uberman mailing list that has a melting pot of people who have tried this method.

So I think that sleep is not such a cut and dry science as some people claim. That is why some people can sleep only 4-5 hours a day and still be immensely productive while other need up to 12. It is a matter of mental brainwaves and like you said evolutionary approach to the sleep genre which will affect people differently.

Re:Not good.....

[ShawnMcCool42]

Sleep may well have evolved as a method to aid survival during resource shortages. Shutting down for a while at night (or during the day, based on the animal) would reduce the food requirements.

Re:Not good.....

[Xtravar]

You sleep in a tree, a hole, etc, where the predators are much less likely to find you- especially if you're not snoring loudly.

Re:Not good.....

[Hoi Polloi]

Deer don't sleep in dens and they are considered yummy by lots of preditors. My wife is another example of a mammal that is completely oblivious to external stimuli during sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[jellie]

Out of curiosity, how does the lack of sleep affect REM sleep and the body's metabolism? I have narcolepsy and I take modafinil (Provigil) to help me stay awake through the day. I could care less about Cephalon, but trying to stay awake without taking the drug is sometimes a hopeless endeavor. And also, how does narcolepsy change things? (I'm referring to metabolism; I already know about lacking non-REM sleep and such.) Thanks.

Re:Not good.....

[morgan_greywolf]

Actually, you *are* a eukaryote and most of us posting here on Slashdot are with the exception of those that have foed me I suspect. :-)

Hey! I am a prokaryote, you insensitive clod!

Re:Not good.....

[chaoticgeek]

I just like sleep. It gives me a chance to chill out for a long period of time. Without sleep I would most likely go insane, and that is from my own perception. I usually go to sleep and then wake up with a list of what I need to do for that day. I then write it down and before I go to sleep I write what ever I need to do that I know down and add to the list after I wake up. Without sleep I would probably be lost during my day. Although 7 to 8 extra hours during the day would be nice.

Re:Not good.....

[yabos]

"Of course if you've ever owned a hamster, you know the domesticated ones seem to sleep all the bloody time..."

And don't try to touch them when they're sleeping or bite your finger! Damn those things are nasty.

Re:Not good.....

[MightyYar]

9 to 6 is a "rat race"??? Where do I apply for THAT tech job? I suppose you had weekends off, too?

Re:Not good.....

[MECC]

For an animal to allow itself to go into an extremely vulnerable state every day for hours

I had a job sleeping for a while - yes the position was designated as a sleep-over. I only had to wake up to restrain a psychopathic autistic individual who ostensibly slept in his room at night on my shift (his door wasn't locked ever - against the rules). Trust me, sleeping isn't as vulnerable as one might at first think. He never surprised me.

Plus, somehow many wild species sleep and survive.

Re:Not good.....

[qwijibo]

You need to be awake during the times when things you like to eat are available. If you can't efficiently find them at night, you're better off sleeping at that time. While you may be vulnerable, the threat isn't too extreme based on the number of people who managed to survive sleeping in the past. Do you sleep at home, or do you figure that's what the predators expect you to do? Anyone could be the victim of a home invasion robbery, but very few people sit in the dark at home with a gun waiting for the predator to strike.

Re:Not good.....

[TubeSteak]

But other studies have indicated increased performance in those subjects allowed REM sleep versus those subjects who have been selectively deprived of REM sleep. Other studies still have shown a reduction (higher efficiency) in brain metabolism in those subjects performing tasks who have been allowed REM sleep versus those other subjects who have been selectively sleep deprived.

You don't really have to show the GP a study to make your point. Reading pretty much anything about sleep apena will allow anyone to see just why sleep-deprivation is evil.

It's like having someone poking you with a stick, on and off, all night, with the express purpose of kicking your brain up to a less restful state of sleep. The end result are basically zombies. There are some very high functioning people who, nonetheless, spend their days exhausted & in a haze.

And by poking with a stick, I actually mean "pinching your nose shut" which has some long-term effects relating to nightly oxygen deprivation.

Re:Not good.....

[nido]

What they [dolphins] do is sleep half their body and brain at a time.

There was a post here some years back by someone who claimed to be able to do this. He [?] said he only found it useful for long-distance road trips.

As I recall, his method worked through totally relaxing (via self hypnosis) half the body at a time.

Re:Not good.....

[networkBoy]

One of which does not include going to jail, so it's already one up on speed.
-nB

Re:Not good.....

[ArsonSmith]

Bored brains and the fact that for many many years now you don't get eaten if you happen to have the disadvantage of moving while sleeping.

Re:Not good.....

[ichimunki]

With that theory in mind, then it seems like watching TV for another third of the day is actually another fanstastic adaptation intended to save energy. ;)

In other words, the theory makes no sense. If we were awake all 24 hours of a day and using more energy asa result, we could simply consume more energy to make up for it. It would take less time to eat a fourth square meal a day than it would to spend eight hours in bed.

Further, the argument that sleep is necessary to preserve higher brain functioning may be supported by evidence of same in humans. But cross-species it doesn't hold up. Healthy cats sleep as much as 60% of the day. Healthy humans average around 35%. Healthy guinea pigs only a few hours, and not all at the same time.

Given all that we don't know about sleep, I'm feeling a bit on the old-fogey conservative side of the fence: no way I'd want to be taking these types of drugs at this point. On the other hand, being able to get by on less than 8 hours a night without impairment would be fantastic. Or exhausting.

Re:Not good.....

[Pentavirate]

I fear the day where it's "uncool" to not stick some drug in you as part of your daily routine in order to get through the day

Kinda like caffeine :)

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

"After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?"

I read this and went "yay!" It sounds like fun. I would be happy to meet people like that.

Re:Not good.....

[Pojut]

I do (comparitively) mild body building, and I did a little experiment.

For one month, I worked out at LEAST 6 hours prior to going to sleep. For the next month, I worked out no MORE than 1 hour prior to going to sleep. I showed a VERY noticable improvement when I worked out shortly before going to sleep as opposed to working out long before going to sleep.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Sleeping is like running your body on reduced (and in some people minimal) power...so instead of doing things like interpreting sight and sounds and tastes and touch and smells, you can spend those extra brain cycles repairing, regrowing, reorganizing, etc...

A good friend of mine who went on to be a neurosurgeon once said "sleeping is to your brain as defragmentation is to your hard drive"

Re:Not good.....

[pinkocommie]

An intimate knowledge of the scientific method coupled with the title of the book "Speculations on the evolution of human intelligence" :P

Re:Not good.....

[mrchaotica]

The trick is that the architecture of sleep is broken up into various stages and you do not really approach the most intense REM periods until after you have progressed back and forth through some of the other stages including a more brief period of REM sleep earlier in the night. So, the most intense REM period is late into sleep and often early in the morning. If you short change yourself of the other sleep periods, you reduce the quantity and quality of your REM sleep period.

So, what if somebody made a drug that eliminate the time-consuming light sleep, while leaving the REM sleep? Would there be any downsides or side-effects to that?

Re:Not good.....

[drsquare]

If you are a simple automaton in your job, then *perhaps* you might be able to get away with something like modafinil for short periods of time, but if your job requires thought and the use of memory and higher cognitive function, then you are doing yourself a disservice by taking these drugs.

I am an automaton in a factory. My job is completely mindless and I work with people who should probably be classified as retarded due to decades of doing said mindless work and heavy alcohol consumption. Due to the shift-working nature of my job which destroys my bodyclock, I often suffer from lack of sleep and spend all my waking hours struggling to stay awake.

All I can say about this drug is: bring it on.

Re:Not good.....

[msh104]

a well, In my view on the world ethics are relative anyway. new times, new technology, new ethics. And, If as you claim there is going to be a slow progression then it will most likely blend naturally into our culture without that much trouble. perhaps changing eye color will become (in a social sense) something like dying hair, or perhaps we will use cybernettic brainpatches so we can access all librarybooks right from our brains. but you know, It doesn't really matter that much. I remember a few years back when we were sitting in a bar and on the other side there was a group of french people who were wildly showing each other there mobile phones and what they could do with it, we where sitting there and none of us had a mobile phone, and most people of the group i was width, thought it was very arrogant behaviour, and now a few years later everyone of them is doing the same, and everyone things it is normal behaviour! I think it will go the same route with these kind of enhancements, and who knows, perhaps it isn't that bad to be something that isn't human by our standards.

Re:Not good.....

[ArsonSmith]

I just hope that, while you are sitting their on that beach getting drinks served to you and staying in a nice hotel room, you are thanking the people that are in that rat race insuring that the drinks are made and the hotel is there and the beaches are at least somewhat clean.

I for one am very glad that not everyone thinks the way you do. It would change from having the opportunity to sit on a beach and watch a sunset to the fact that we have to work just to eat rather quickly.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop. You're turning me on.

Re:Not good.....

[PresidentEnder]

Well, we snore. Rats don't.

Re:Not good.....

[jank1887]

civilization has allowed people with weaker traits to survive and procreate, propegating the weak trait... rather than being eaten by the dinosaurs they coexisted with (yippee creationist museum)

Re:Not good.....

[rk]

"You too can have "it" if you peddle just a little harder!!"

I like the wordplay: "pedal/peddle". Did you intend it, or was it just one of those happy accidents?

Re:Not good.....

[Vellmont]

The appendix and spleen are NOT vestigial organs.

True of the spleen, but at least according to wikipedia it's still controversial whether the appendix serves any real purpose:

One explanation has been that the appendix is a vestigial structure with no current purpose.[citation needed] The appendix is thought to have descended from an organ in our distant herbivorous ancestors called the cecum (or caecum). The cecum is maintained in modern herbivores, where it houses the bacteria that digest cellulose, a chemically tough carbohydrate that these animals could not otherwise utilize. The human appendix contains no significant number of these bacteria, and cellulose is indigestible to us. It seems likely that the appendix lost this function before our ancestors became recognizably human.

Maybe you're thinking of the tonsils?


Statements like that (e.g., the appendix and spleen do not perform necessary functions) make evolutionists look stupid.

From what I understand of evolutionary theory, that's not really accurate. It takes the correct mutations to eliminate organs that no longer serve any purpose. As long as they don't provide any disadvantage, they're not going to be eliminated from the gene pool.

If anything, the existence of vestigial structures make intelligence design/creationists look stupid. Why would an intelligence designer create a structure that serves no purpose, (though the same structure exists in other "lower" animals that the organism and the animal both likely evolved from a common ancestor)?

Re:Not good.....

[Socguy]

Assuming this drug works as advertized, how long till it's not a 'option' and we're all working 24 hour days?

Re:Not good.....

[TheLink]

Uh birds sleep too.

Most creatures with enough of a brain need sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[paanta]

If you sleep 80% of the time, and use half the energy as a result, can't your environment support more of your offspring? There's a limited amount of energy out there, especially for predators, so energy conservation might make sense. Also pertaining to predators is the fact that most of them are specialized to either hunt at night or during the day, so it makes sense to go into hibernation in those off-peak hunting hours.

Speaking out of my ass, since I'm no biologist, it seems that while all higher life forms sleep, the amount they sleep is strongly correlated with how often they eat, how long it takes to digest their primary food source (meat vs. grasses vs. sugary stuff) and how much food is available in their environment.

Re:Not good.....

[LouisZepher]

I suppose borrowing energy from the future is a tad better than say, borrowing energy from that nap you had before the dinner party last Wednesday. If such technology comes about, I bet people will be pretty pissed at their future selves...

Re:Not good.....

[Vellmont]

Playing devil's advocate here: And the problem with this is?

Well there's always the possibility of turning into these guys.

Re:Not good.....

[CouchP]

I recall a certain episode of the documentary "Star Trek, a New Generation" that proves your point!

Re:Not good.....

[Real_Reddox]

Dogs do sometimes.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Dogs are predators, not prey. They evolved not needing to be worried about someone eating them.

Re:Not good.....

[Aceticon]

From the OP:

Yves (not his real name), a 31- year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'

After reading the parent post (actually even before), me being a software developer too and having had a mental breakdown in the past due to overworking and bad working conditions, i started asking myself:

"What kind of company is so great that you would risk frying your brains (possibly loosing mental faculties for good, maybe even turning into a retard or even a vegetable) for them?"

Is this pure, sheer, unadulterated stupidity of the highest degree, or those this guy know something i don't know?

Somebody wise in the ways of self-sacrifice for the greater financial good of somebody else please enlighten me.

Re:Not good.....

[Kyont]

> There was a post here some years back by someone who claimed to be able to do this.
> He [?] said he only found it useful for long-distance road trips.

> As I recall, his method worked through totally relaxing (via self hypnosis) half the body at a time.

We haven't heard from that guy in a while. Apparently, he was killed in a single-car accident at 4 a.m. on I-80 in central Nevada. Misjudged a curve due to a lack of depth perception while his left eye was sleeping.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there a /. article, or maybe fark (i know, right?) not to long ago that told how birds sleep for a few seconds every so often on long flights, conserving energy?

Now I don't know much about sleep or its processes, but from my experiences, there are 2 types of sleep: Deep sleep, and conscious sleep. Deep sleep is just that. Dreams, fantasies, snoring, feeling well-rested when you wake up. Conscious sleep is something else. You know you are sleeping, you are aware of what position your body is in, what you were concentrating on before you went to sleep, what you have to do when you wake up, etc... and when you do wake up, you are rested and can function(?). Well, thats what I'd call it.

Usually conscious sleep occurred after heavy concentration, or mental faculties being used. Used to happen all the time intensely studying Calculus, or doing in depth computer work somewhat late, and having to get up in 5-6 hours. Deep sleep seems to occur whenever I haven't been doing much before bed, or I'm REALLY tired from several short-sleep nights. Of course I prefer deep sleep, but I don't have a problem the next day if that wasn't the case.

I've heard stories, or read somewhere, of certain military branches that train sleep behavior types somewhat related to what I described above as conscious sleep. Ability to know your environment while sleeping in the event you need to react quickly even though you are resting.... Intriguing and possibly disturbing at the same time.

Anyone care to add?

Re:Not good.....

[jc42]

Uh birds sleep too.

Yeah, but there was the recent research showing that many birds sleep on just one side of their brain at a time. ;-)

One thing I thought interesting about the report was that some of their test subjects were cockatiels. We have 'tiels, and we've often seen them apparently asleep, but if you can move to see their other eye, you find it open and alert (while the first one is still closed). Apparently part of what triggered the research was people reporting this sort of thing in their pet birds.

The researchers instrumented the birds' brains (with very light-weight instruments ;-), and found that when the birds were in this state, with one eye open and one closed, their brain activity matched the pattern, with one hemisphere quiet and the other one active.

A curious aspect to this is that birds' eyes are, like ours, wired into both sides of the brain. But the "asleep on one side only" pattern exists, and matches the eyes.

The hypothesis is that birds generally don't need as much sleep as they get, so they stay half-alert to watch out for predators, maintain their grip on their perch, etc. And the alert side can send a wake-up signal to the sleeping side if anything interesting happens.

Re:Not good.....

[timeOday]

Agreed. The fact is evolution can explain and predict anything and everything, whether or not it is true (e.g. humans have wings so they can escape predators). The fact that a just-so story comes from (insert famous astrophysicist) means nothing in itself.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they still do have dogs in China, don't they?

Re:Not good.....

[gurudude]

I've done pretty much the same thing my entire life - much to my parents chagrin during my early day... Ever since I was born, 3 hours 15 minutes, almost to the second... No observed adverse effects, I've done several sleep studies both in college and a few since I moved up near Yale... No related health issues, no problems - I don't feel tired, I function normally... Unlike one poster suggested, I don't work a boring, repetitive job - well, *sometimes* being a contract database programmer gets repetitive but it's not burger flipping... I made my way through college holding done a full time job, 20 hours a semester 2/ a 3.9 (4.0 in major) and left with a MS in Math and a MS in Comp Sci... Now, in my 40's, I sometimes take a little nap out in the hammock on Sundays (being a heathen has it's perks!) but at no time in my life have I ever *needed* to take naps unless I had a really nasty flu or some such illness... I have an ex-wife who contends I'm crazy, but a shrink who is more inclined to 'just a little weird' so... The doctor I'd seen @ Yale said it wasn't totally unheard of, but certainly rare... I think someday they'll find a way to reduce the amount of sleep the average person needs... A couple of interesting (to me anyway) side notes, I fall asleep withing minutes of lying down and according to the sleep studies, enter REM within 30 minutes of going to sleep...

Re:Not good.....

[sbrown123]

And yet we snore, toss and turn, twitch, and sometimes talk in our sleep. Nothing says easy meal more than a loud unconscious mammal.

What are you talking about? Snoring is a defensive measure. Hell, it probably sounded like a large herd of vicious animals roaring when you put enough humans together snoring in unison.

And if that's not enough, I imagine that these early humans probably didn't do much in the way of bathing. Nothing says "I just tossed my lunch" than being downwind from a large pack of primitive humans.

Re:Not good.....

[headonfire]

Yeah, er, that article about the appendix is a bit wrong, or at least misleading; and you're quoting it out of context by ignoring the beginning paragraph about how the appendix connects.

Humans _do_ have a cecum. It's at the beginning of the large intestine; it's the juncture where the small bowel(the ileum, more precisely) and large bowel meet. It's a bit of a pouch shape. There's also the ileocecal valve, which handles flow control. The appendix is directly connected to the cecum. The thing is hardly 'vestigial'. It may have been different, once, but what in our bodies hasn't changed at least a bit since we crawled out of the Soup?

Re:Not good.....

[jc42]

I know a number of people who don't consume caffeine, and I've yet to hear anyone call them "uncool" because of this.

One is my wife, who years ago learned that she was overly sensitive to caffeine, so she just avoids it. OTOH, she sees me drink a cup of coffee and then go off and take a nap. I once explained that it's because I'm just an insensitive male, and she agreed that that must be the explanation.

Her main complaint is that she can't eat chocolate with getting a strong reaction, and she loves chocolate. But she has learned to avoid it. This is difficult in restaurants, where most desserts contain chocolate.

Re:Not good.....

[Deviant Q]

This seems to imply to me that one can adapt to no REM sleep, but if one is getting it sporadically or has gotten it for many years but then has it turned off for the duration of a study, then one is screwed. Alternatively maybe sleeping 8 hours without REM is OK, but sleeping until you hit REM, then being woken up by a researcher, then going back to sleep, etc. is not OK.

Re:Not good.....

[supabeast!]

If you are a simple automaton in your job, then *perhaps* you might be able to get away with something like modafinil for short periods of time...

There's no shortage of people who fit the bill of automatons at work. By reducing the need for sleep we could dramatically increase the productivity of factory workers, nearly everyone working in restaurants, retail cashiers, and a whole lot of other menial jobs. Keeping them wired to work longer shifts or at multiple jobs would create a much larger labor pool and allow employers to pay less, which could lead to dramatic increases in profitability. These drugs are combined with drugs that focus attention, specialized diets; and structured break times can create an industrial workforce that both obviates the desire to replace them with complex robots and keeps them so busy that the leaders of a technocratic society would no longer need to deal with workers interfering with government.

Of course such a society would have little need for most of the goods it produced, so the whole system would collapse pretty quickly. So maybe it would be better if we all just used the drugs to stay up all night playing WoW...

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

I'm a freak, then -- I have that superior ability to finely discern colour (which was article'd here last year) AND I have *very* good night vision. My retinas must be very crowded. :)

As to nocturnal or not... I've noticed that if it's too cold to be comfortable, I'm more inclined to stay up late -- as if the body says "Stay active so you don't freeze to death". And when predators are lacking, rabbits and other small vermin we usually think of as "nocturnal" become much more active during daylight.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

How could the parent be modded to 5?

This is what infuriates me about conservatives, they get a little semi-lie that sounds good and say it somewhat loudly. Most people ignore them, some disprove them quickly, but the ones that they are targeting, other conservatives that WANT to believe, just read it and go "Oh, yeah" and ignore everything else, then propagate this excuse to others with the same beliefs.

It's deliberate, methodical ignorance, and it's effecting this entire country--hell world.

The appendix is useless, but throw it in there with the spleen and it's enough to cause uncertainty in--well at least in 4 moderators.

Evolution would predict useless organs at various points--there would probably always be one or two of them in a given body. There are probably dozens of other things in our bodies that do more harm then good--tonsils, molars, acne (some don't get Acne, why does anyone get it then?) and probably dozens or hundreds of other structures and processes that aren't as visible...

--

Yes, I'm posting anonymously--because some Christians will kill you if you make them think or challenge them.

Re:Not good.....

[__aahrlq8808]

In my own musings, I'd figured sleep was just an energy-saving mode (yes, we are all computers). When we sleep, our body temperature lowers and we're not running around at a relatively unproductive time of the day. Especially when no food is available, a power-saving mode would be a great advantage in waiting out the bad circumstances (think hibernation, listlessness in famines, or siestas b/c it's too hot to work). If you look at reptiles as always being in low-power (cold-blooded) mode, the increased sleep trade-off for mammals and birds seems reasonable.

I think the inactivity and lack of cerebral stimulation during sleep was later used as a time to organize the day's experiences and long-term memories (like defragmentation), so now we're stuck with it even when we can work by artificial light.

Re:Not good.....

[fimbulvetr]

The ones that snore, maybe.

Re:Not good.....

[Martin Blank]

Get a job working for a contractor to a government (federal, state, or local -- doesn't really matter). You get all of the holidays, industry-standard vacation, hourly limits (if you're billable per hour), and a decent pay level. In random cases, you even get to work with technology more recent than ($currentyear-3). (I have a Merom laptop in front of me, a reasonably new desktop with DVD writer next to me, and we're working with the newest Opterons in our servers. The price? The Blackberry on my hip, but we've coordinated on-call schedules well enough that it rarely goes off.)

Re:Not good.....

[damienl451]

What I'm about to say doesn't have anything to do with sleep, so mod me down if you want to. So, here goes : unlike what most people believe, we creationists do not reject "natural selection", which has been proven. We only reject evolution by means of natural selection, which is an entirely different thing. So, instead of ridiculing something you don't know anything about, maybe you should try to go to a few GOOD creationist websites and learn what we really teach.

Re:Not good.....

[drfishy]

You're obviously not a member of the NRA... /rimshot

Re:Not good.....

[Malc]

The long-term health consequences of reduced sleep are rarely discussed, especially as they're not noticeable on a daily basis. There seems to be some body of evidence that life expectancy is reduced for people who sleep less. Certainly the effects of drugs that seem to remove or reduce the need for sleep will remain unknown for a long time - do you want to be a guineapig?

Re:Not good.....

[Deviant Q]

The idea of everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week, and never getting sick may sound great to some, but where does it stop? After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?

Oooh, ooh, pick me! Those are easy ones!

Here are the answers: nowhere! Yes! Yes, yes, yes!

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

That was me. I'll close one eye for about half an hour, and the effect is as if I've taken a nap. It apparently works by shutting off input to half of the brain, letting that half relax.

It's more effective if I shut the right eye, albeit leading to terror in the passenger seat. :)

(I also take more-ordinary naps at home, which tend to hover at the edge of sleep. And I'm naturally a *very* light sleeper, and a sunrise person.)

Re:Not good.....

[Jack9]

People get drunk off Listerine and huff Glade, that doesn't mean I'm troubled by the actual chemical.

What one considers troubling, is probably exciting for another.

There's no evidence that losing sleep has longterm side-effects, once a month (for example).

Please note, the results of prolonged sleep loss is not the issue.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this drug (that's very helpful for some disorders) other than it's something that has been written in scifi novels in the past, which can be unnerving for those who haven't considered the sociological effects.

I'm sure we can all remember allnighters and some have even experimented with their individual tolerance (47 hours before I physically cannot stay awake). So I'm surprised by the negativity.

Re:Not good.....

[Muad'Dave]

I worked out at LEAST 6 hours prior to going to sleep.

Good God, man, how did you keep from dropping DEAD?

Re:Not good.....

[thetaco82]

From what I understand of evolutionary theory, that's not really accurate. It takes the correct mutations to eliminate organs that no longer serve any purpose. As long as they don't provide any disadvantage, they're not going to be eliminated from the gene pool.

My understanding of natural selection is that genes naturally decay through incremental mutations. If a mutation is detrimental to the organism's survival, then it will not be passed on to future generations. Traits that no longer serve a purpose will decay because there is no pressure to preserve them; mutations will be passed down along with the healthy genes. Over time, the mutations build up and the trait will fade away. A good example of this is the sense of smell. Most animals have a very keen sense of smell relative to humans. Animals with a dull sense of smell will be less likely to detect predators, and they will die. We humans live in such a way that there aren't any environmental pressures that make smell key to survival. People without a keen sense of smell are at no greater risk of death and the cycle of decay continues.

Re:Not good.....

[VGR]

Of course if you've ever owned a hamster, you know the domesticated ones seem to sleep all the bloody time...

All mammals sleep all day if confined to a cage with nothing to do; it's called boredom. Even hamsters need mental stimulation. An exercise wheel only goes so far.

Try changing the terrain (new tubes, houses, etc.) every day. They won't sleep nearly as much.

Of course, hamsters are nocturnal, so they probably do a lot more sleeping in the day than at night.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

I've noticed that grasshoppers and spiders exhibit "sleep" -- not only inactive, but insensible to their surroundings.

Ordinarly it's tough to sneak up on a grasshopper, but if it's "asleep" you can literally just bend over and pick it up, and it may not even try to get away. Spiders do more of a startle reaction if you catch them "asleep", contrasted to their normal just-move-away behaviour.

(Yes, I was one of those kids who always had a jarful of grasshoppers and/or spiders. :)

Re:Not good.....

[t0rkm3]

Well, for one the cells of the nervous system need to be recharged. This takes place at an accelerated rate during sleep. The muscle cells of the body also need to restore their glycogen and other nutrients as well as make repairs to contractile proteins that will have been damaged. This is accelerated by a dramatic rise in Growth Hormone during sleep. GH is also responsible for repair and regrowth of other tissues.

The cost of not sleeping may be subtle, but very costly in the long term. Very similar to people who habitually use painkillers. Painkillers will allow you to turn an acute condition into a chronic by allowing you to function without the inhibitory condition of pain.

Precisely why I have not taken pain meds for my wisdom tooth removal, tonsillectomy, or umbilical hernia repair. The pain reminds you of what you ought not be doing.

Re:Not good.....

[-kertrats-]

Well, if Wikipedia says it, it must be true.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyhow, when did pill-popping become fashionable? You weren't around in the '60s, were you?

Re:Not good.....

[Shaman]

My 15lb schnauzer mini snores like a rock splitter.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

[pro dog breeder hat] Same with puppies. When they're growing fast, it happens "overnight", and they also sleep a lot more when they're in a rapid growth phase. My understanding is that deep sleep is *necessary* to proper growth and body-repair (and growth is kindof "repair in advance") so it makes sense.

Re:Not good.....

[Boyceterous]

Does she spend a lot of time on the Genesis planet?

Re:Not good.....

[Peet42]

Oh...kay... I'm in Scotland at the moment, where it's completely dark about 5:30pm. If I turn off the electric light an hour before bedtime (11pm aiming for midnight) I'm instantly plunged into pitch darkness. What do you suggest...?

Re:Not good.....

[Pojut]

It ain't easy...that's why I DESPISE working out in the morning;-)

Frankly, I feel a bit stronger in the evening anyway, have the whole day to loosen up.

Re:Not good.....

[kelleher]

Here's a table of average daily sleep time for various animals.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chasleep.htm l

Re:Not good.....

[fimbulvetr]

Don't know if it's entirely true, but insightful enough to try, I suppose. Thanks.

Re:Not good.....

[BigCheese]

Yup, I'm one of those. I've got apena somewhere between moderate and severe which is sleeping about 10 minutes at a time. Before I got my CPAP I would sometimes pass out right after getting up and every day was a struggle just to stay awake.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I reminds me of two things. One, here in my city, people wonder which drug you're on more than who you're on, and if you're not on some sort of pill or herb, they'll be like "damn man, you're a fucking machine, take some weed or some shit. being so active isnt good for you, someone might mistaken you for a tweaker!"
Second, it reminds me of Farenheit 451, where the society was full of drugged up dullards who had no remorse or any sympathy or empathy for others.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant timing, not duration. :)

Re:Not good.....

[AnomaliesAndrew]

Why would an intelligence designer create a structure that serves no purpose

The obligatory... "Just because we don't know its purpose doesn't mean He didn't put it there for a reason..."

(I support evolution theory, but I just had to play devil's advocate...)

- Andy

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you slept 80% of the time it would be hard to have offspring in the first place. Finding a mate in the wild is a demanding and competetive business (most of us can personally vouch for that). Not only do you have to be out and about but you have to draw attention to yourself. Not necessarily the best thing to do when preditors are about but the sex drive beats all.

Re:Not good.....

[xaonon]

The idea of everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week, and never getting sick may sound great to some, but where does it stop? After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?

I certainly hope so! The drive to improve ourselves is part of what makes us who we are. We cannot deny that impulse without betraying our own natures, even if it means leaving behind our current arbitraty genome. Homo sapiens is a good starting point, but we can do far better.

Re:Not good.....

[Cro Magnon]

Yes, but how many predators, other than you, consider your wife "yummy"?

Re:Not good.....

[badasscat]

In my own musings, I'd figured sleep was just an energy-saving mode (yes, we are all computers). When we sleep, our body temperature lowers and we're not running around at a relatively unproductive time of the day. Especially when no food is available, a power-saving mode would be a great advantage in waiting out the bad circumstances (think hibernation, listlessness in famines, or siestas b/c it's too hot to work). If you look at reptiles as always being in low-power (cold-blooded) mode, the increased sleep trade-off for mammals and birds seems reasonable.

Of course, you don't need to be asleep to lower your body temperature and save energy. All you need to do is turn down the heat and sit down.

Sleep is a bit more than that. The problem is it's still not well understood. But in REM sleep, your mind is actually incredibly active, not passive or at rest. What it's actually doing and why is what we don't really know yet. What we do know is that people who go for just a few days without sleep often undergo profound, permanent personality changes (and those who go for more than a couple weeks or so without sleep die). There was a famous radio DJ in the 1950's that went without sleep for several days on air - by about the 4th day, he reportedly was seeing spiders everywhere and was babbling pretty much incoherently. His family and friends reported that he was never the same again, and he lost his job and faded into obscurity shortly afterwards.

I'm no scientist, and for all I know these new drugs could prove to work just fine. But from what I do know about sleep, I'm pretty skeptical of the long-term effects of taking these drugs. There is obviously something necessary about sleep that regulates our personalities, maintains our memory and keeps us from literally going nuts - and also that keeps us alive. As we still haven't identified exactly what the mechanism is that does that, I don't really see how all of that could be boiled down into pill form. We've taken an unknown and claimed to have replicated it. Something is missing here.

My sense is these drugs just cover up the symptoms of sleep deprivation, but the effects are nevertheless still there and are cumulative.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

My normal sleep cycle is a little over 2.5 hours long. Two cycles runs about 5:15.

I've found that I can scrape by (for months or even years) on two sleep cycles per day, but then I've *got* to have that half-hour afternoon nap.

If I only get a single sleep cycle, then I've *got* to make it up, and don't sleep as well (ie. don't get as much out of it) until that's done.

I really need 3 sleep cycles (almost 8 hours) to be at my best, and better yet, timed so I can rise at the butt-crack of dawn. Actually SEEING the sun come up makes a big difference in how I feel for the day.

Re:Not good.....

[BigJavaGeek]

This is what infuriates me about conservatives

This is what infuriates me about any group that tries to indict another group for actions/thoughts of a few. I'm generally conservative, but that doesn't stop me from fully believing in evolution. Even though 50% of people are on the conservative side of the median, doesn't mean that all 50% think exactly the same. If you want to pick on creationists, or proponents of intelligent design, fine, have at it. You would present a better argument if you thought about it enough to be a little more critical (conservative != creationist). If not, your obvious political bias shines through and you're just another purveyor of group-think.

Try rewriting your attack on conservatives and their supposed reliance on a semi-lie (lumping spleen in with appendix) with, say, a slashdotter lumping all conservatives in with creationists because it fits a preconceived notion...

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

And my ferrets sometimes thrash around and whimper while sleeping.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

My dog snores, and also twitches and yips in her sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Amount of sleep depends on age. Up to 40, I could manage late nights & early mornings & catch up at weekends with perhaps 10-12 hours continuous sleep. After 50, I can manage on 6 hours a night for long periods (weeks) and no catch up. Can't do sleep for more than 6.5 hours at a time, unless ill. Then I do sleep significantly more.

Re:Not good.....

[gibbdog]

Whether or not they are vestigial depends on your definition. Personally I think that the appendix was originally used for one purpose, underwent an evolutionary shift and then developed more of the secondary function of being the "tonsils of the gut". From doing histology on many mammals it seems that the region of the gut has more lymphatic cells than other portions, so possibly the appendix atrophied, and kept it's peyer's patches, or maybe it evolved a function not previously performed by the original organ... If you take it from that stance it is an argument of "retrogressive evolution" (I hate that term as it assumes evolution has a direction), or if evolving a new function makes the previous character state vestigial in the new organ etc.

Long story short, I do believe that the appendix serves a DIFFERENT function than it originally did, but whether or not that makes it vestigial is up to who interprets the data, what background they have, what phase of the moon it is and whether or not they change the oil in their vehicle every 3,000 miles.

Re:Not good.....

[arose]

(I support evolution theory, but I just had to play devil's advocate...)

Devil as the intelligent designer? That may explain the appendix...

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting around in a dark room for an hour before I go to bed will bore the hell out of me. I think I'd rather take the drugs.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet we snore, toss and turn, twitch, and sometimes talk in our sleep. Nothing says easy meal more than a loud unconscious mammal.

Right, which is why houses evolve from wood, plastic, and metal. See, evolution explains everything!

Re:Not good.....

[Luthair]

I believe the parent was referring to a birds ability to see the ultraviolet spectrum.

Re:Not good.....

[deadphoenix]

Vacation is not a verb.

Re:Not good.....

[fw3]

Ahh, so you're the person I want to ask this. I've read many times about the Uberman and similar trained polyphasic sleep cycles, where the individual trains to only sleep in ~20 minute catnaps which will be exclusively REM state sleep? I've always found it hard to imagine that for people who experience physical as well as stress / mental fatigue would be well served by polyphasic sleep, but perhaps you know something about it.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

Nonsense. I only do it with my right eye. ;)

Re:Not good.....

[Ponga]

Your post embodies a very concise and rational argument.
Thank you.

Re:Not good.....

[ozbird]

If anything, the existence of vestigial structures make intelligence design/creationists look stupid. Why would an intelligence designer create a structure that serves no purpose, (though the same structure exists in other "lower" animals that the organism and the animal both likely evolved from a common ancestor)?

Obligatory "Time Bandits" quote:

Evil Genius: God isn't interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time: forty-three species of parrots! Nipples for men!

Re:Not good.....

[bdcrazy]

I have notice that some people are refered to as a "morning" person, or a "night" person. I had a roommate in college who fell asleep in like 2 minutes, but it would take him like 45 minutes to an hour to be ready to face the day in the morning, asking them questions before that requisite time and you'd get back almost giberish most of the time, now myself, I take like an hour or more to fall asleep, but when i wake up in the morning, i'm ready to go almost as soon as my eyes open. I sometimes wish i could fall asleep fast, but if i would have to trade for his side effects, i don't think i would like that. It seems there is more to this sleeping thing that a lot of people realize.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

Per TFA, it sounds kindof like it induces the "walking sleep" stage that WW1 and WW2 footsoldiers would experience on long marches.

Maybe a bit related -- I can sometimes tell that I'm brainwise "asleep" -- something in my brain has switched off for the night (usually meaning about 8pm), even tho I walk and talk and seem perfectly functional.

Re:Not good.....

[deadphoenix]

Buy a desk lamp and put a dimmer bulb in it / buy a shade / position it so it's not glaring in your face and read a (god forbid) book. Christ, is it really that hard to figure out?

Re:Not good.....

[djp928]

The idea of everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week, and never getting sick may sound great to some, but where does it stop? After we've reached the point of greatly diminishing returns from drugs, do we turn to machines for enhancment? Do we augment ourselves with embedded computer chips, use genetic engineering to enhance our characteristics, or completely tailor our bodies and minds into something we can't even imagine today?

Yup. It's called Transhumanism, and a lot of people subscribe to its basic philosophy of augmenting human beings with technology and medecine to create perhaps a higher lifeform.

-- Dave

Re:Not good.....

[oc255]

I definitely appreciate the deep eyesight analysis that dwarfs my own speculation but I can't wave the flag with you. Human eyesight to me is non-predator cow-eye mush. When I am in bed and my cat is warming my feet, I can't see her _at all_. Zero. Black on black for all I know. When I pass my hand near her, she sees my hand and precisely rubs her face against it every time. All I have to do is place her in a larger Tiger context and me in the absence of civilization and I see that I'm an easy meal every 24 hours.

Re:Not good.....

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Misjudged a curve due to a lack of depth perception while his left eye was sleeping.

Depth perception at open-road driving distances is not done by paralax. (The eyes are too close together for that to work.) It is done by comparing a time-series of images as the body moves through space.

It's especially effective if you're moving up-and-down - like the overall up-and-down motion when you're walking, or going over humps in a car. (Try closing one eye while walking some time.) But changing position sideways - in a land on a straightaway, or by going around curves - works, too.

Re:Not good.....

[dghcasp]

Train yourself with a normal schedule in sync with the sun.

You must be in California. I'm in Canada.

Today, sunrise was at 8:05, and sunset will be at 4:40. I'm sure my boss will love this excuse for a shorter workday.

Re:Not good.....

[lubricated]

Is Carl Sagan a biologist?

Doesn't sound like it. Animals other than mammals sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Aspirin inhibits the synthesis of prostaglandin pain mediators and penicillin interferes in the formation of bacterial cell walls. Just because you don't know how they work doesn't mean scientists don't.

Re:Not good.....

[malign]

Nothing says "I just tossed my lunch" than being downwind from a large pack of primitive humans.

You've been to Texas????

Re:Not good.....

[cayenne8]

"But a concern is still the long term side effects. By playing with stuff like this, would it lead to mental insanity later on due to paranoia or schizophrenia? We are, after all, playing with the mental state of mind..."

Yeah..I was thinking of this, along with how the OP was saying he didn't have time to sleep with job, etc.

As I say to many such things I hear. "You have 24 hours in a day...it is up to YOU as to how you want to spend them. If you have a job that is keeping you from sleeping, you need another job. A job is ONLY a job....it is only a means to earn a living, there are plenty of them out there.

I'm not talking about the occasional overtime, or crunches we find ourselves in....that is par for the course in the working world, but, if that is the rule rather than the exception...quit and move on. A job should not drive you to wanting to take pills to avoid the basic needs and pleasures in life....sleep is one of the big ones!!

Personally I like to sleep...when I'm bone tired, it is a pleasure to drift off. I like to dream!! I remember many of my dreams, and for the most part they are pleasant, and a kind of 'mental magic' that really is not possible in any other way. Life's natural hallucinations.

And as others have posted...it is something required for good mental and physical health...neither of those are good to be neglected, especially the former. If you lose mental health, you've lost "YOU"....I tend to like myself, and would not want that to be deteriorated or broken. Long bouts of non-sleep can mess with you...in severely bad ways.

Remember folks...life is short, and unless you're a believer in reincarnation, you only get one shot at it. Nothing that threatens to shorten it, or damage your journey through is, is worth it.

Re:Not good.....

[bliz1985]

Loren G. Martin, professor of physiology at Oklahoma State University, claims* that the appendix is involved in immune functions. Some people are born without an appendix, but there were no reports of impaired immune or gastrointestinal functions. This means that these people, as a result of mutated genes, have a loss of a phenotype, but their health are not affected by it. However, as very few literatures exist (also due to little number of cases) about people with a congenital absence of an appendix, we cannot exclude the possibility that the appendix is involved in immune functions. Nonetheless, we can assume that the appendix has little or no useful function, and thus congenital absence of an appendix as a result of mutation does not lead to any significant effect on the mutant.

As such, we cannot conclude if the appendix is vestigal or not, rather that people can live healthy lives without it. Heck, we can't even conclude if something is vestigal or not coz we'll never know ALL the bodily functions, not forgetting that the whole is greater than the sum of parts.

* http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000CAE56-7201-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7

Re:Not good.....

[olyar]

Anyhow, when did pill-popping become fashionable? I fear the day where it's "uncool" to not stick some drug in you as part of your daily routine in order to get through the day (as opposed to treating disease). Or the "there's a drug for everything" mentality.

Seriously!

/takes another drink of coffee.

Re:Not good.....

[TexVex]

we've often seen them apparently asleep, but if you can move to see their other eye, you find it open and alert I've got four of the little bastards and I've never noticed them doing that. Now I'm gonna have to watch 'em for a while and try see it happen.

Are they doing this when they sleep on one foot with the other one tucked away?

Re:Not good.....

[Mprx]

I can't think of any case of somebody successfully following this schedule long term. It's the best option when sleep time is limited by external circumstances, and you can keep it up for a month or so, but it is not IMO an adequate replacement for normal sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[fastcoke11]

A lot of people in this thread should take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep/ for an interesting read. There are a lot of people out there that work on very few hours of sleep, and not all at the same time.

Re:Not good.....

[stunt_penguin]

Mmmm, not in a scenario where there is a finite supply of food; the reduced demand means you've actually got enough.

Re:Not good.....

[Schmendr1ck]

If you talk to an amateur astronomer (like me), he'll tell you that we humans actually have decent, but not great, night vision. There are two problems, though. First, it takes time to acquire. A minimum of 20-30 minutes in very low light is generally needed for good dark adaptation - for some folks it can take as long as an hour. Also, any relatively bright light, even a brief flash, will break down the accumulated rhodopsin in your retinas, destroying your dark adaptation and forcing you to start over. We use red flashlights because the red wavelengths don't break down rhodopsin as readily, and we also throw large, sharp objects at folks who shine white flashlights during a star party.

But once you're dark adapted, you can see well enough to walk around and do quite a lot in conditions that a non-dark adapted person would consider "pitch black". Could you see a black cat sitting still on a black background? Maybe, maybe not. But could you see well enough to run away from a large predator at night without stumbling into a tree? Most likely yes.

Re:Not good.....

[BWJones]

Well, I guess if you're going to take away my PDE inhibitors, I might as well sleep anyway.

Oh my, that *is* funny. Mod parent funny! :-)

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

If one side of your body is sleeping, does that mean it only works for long road trips with only left turns but no rights?

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have working depth perception, and I've never misjudged a curve while driving.

Re:Not good.....

[justo]

na-ah... http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vacation

intransitive verb, w/o object

Re:Not good.....

[nleaf]

And if that's not enough, I imagine that these early humans probably didn't do much in the way of bathing. Nothing says "I just tossed my lunch" than being downwind from a large pack of primitive humans.

So you're saying that geek hygiene is an evolutionary advantage?

Re:Not good.....

[Philaretus]

"Most bone growth occurs at night, study finds"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6876520/

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I do something similar when walking and very tired (and wearing sunglasses too, btw). I aim a straight line with no people or obstacles and close *both* eyes for some 10-15 seconds, then open up to correct track and re-scan the surroundings.

It's amazingly relaxing, but works best where there the ground is all flat and there's not much people around.

I also do this for longer intervals if walking with the wife (holding hands) at the beach, for example, because it's less likely that I'll hit something or someone doing this.

But the sunglasses are a must, or else people will look at you very confused :D

Re:Not good.....

[geekoid]

Do an experiment. When an active period starts measure herin the evennig and in the morning.

Depending on her age, this could help enforce scientific curiosity.

Re:Not good.....

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Quick experience: measure yourself before you go to bed at night and as you get up after a long (say 7-8h) night of sleep. You'll gain as much as 5cm (~2in) just from that.

There's something to do with your spinal cord re-absoving liquids and such, it's not just the spacing between bones there, the bones to "grow" overnight - but loose liquid during the day so you're shorter again the next evening.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

it's really all irrelevent. the question is: what does it do for a person's long term well being?

like most shortcuts, quick fixes and magic bullets...not a damn thing.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap a woman who doesn't eat chocolate. Now I know you are lying. :)

On the pill popping comment. I don't think it can be healthy. Ever seen some one on a three-four day crack or Meth bender? They haven't slept for days and you seriously doubt their mental stability.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

From the dictionary entry for conservative:
tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions

From the definition of Liberal:
BROAD-MINDED; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms

The word "Conservative" basically means that you choose not to challenge your preconceived notions or the current state of (the world, your government, ...).

The word "Liberal" means that you tend to rethink and constantly challenge your preconceived notions as well as the state of the government or...

If you mean "a member of the republican party of the United States", then say that, but don't assume that's what I was saying. We don't have a "Conservative" party although they do in England (great, more confusion). (We have at least to parties however with primarily conservative policies/politics)

My attack on the "Conservative" stands--Conservatives "Conserve" their mindset. This IS Creationists, this IS Christians--simply by the definition of faith--you can't have faith without the conservative will to defend that faith against all thoughts foreign and domestic that might attack it, if you don't have that conservative will, you don't have faith.

IF this isn't you, call yourself a republican and a liberal thinker then -- but you might want to stay away from this horrid, evil concept of conservatism.

The republican and democrat parties are politically conservative. Neither is interested in serious change. The Green and Libertarian are politically liberal parties.

Most of the people in the US are certainly conservative, some are labeled "liberal" like animal rights people that get so set on defending a concept like"Fur" that it becomes a faith--they stop challenging the concept at all, but I'd say 80-90% are conservatives who, if they every had an original thought would immediately squash it like a gnat out of fear that one of their conservative friends might see it and decry them a liberal.

In a country with such quickly changing technologies, you'd think that conservative politics would be outlawed as obviously unable to cope with anything coming down the pike.

Re:Not good.....

[lawaetf1]

Good eye (brain, too). A happy accident.

Re:Not good.....

[gatesvp]

Yeah, except that pain-killers are often a fix for stuff in the (a) category.

It's the old "Doctor it hurts when I ..." jokes. And the doctor replies: "Well then, don't do that."

Pain is unpleasant (actually kind of the nature of pain). This unpleasantness is a signal that something is wrong. The body signals pain as a sign of distress, it's shouting "hey you something's wrong". This is an "irreducible, necessary part of living". Our body has a feedback mechanism to tell us that something is endangering the organism.

Now what happens when I pop an advil? Have I really solved the problem, is my organism no longer endangered? Unless the problem was inflammation, my body is still in distress; except that now, I'm ignoring it. The alarm is still ringing, I just hit the snooze button.

Personally, I have a very rough time taking pain-killers b/c they're very dangerous. They have their uses: surgery, recovery, palliative care and as one-shot snooze buttons, but they have to be used sparingly.

If I'm popping two advil/day to handle my headaches this is dangerous. Daily Midol on a 5-day menstrual cycle? Weekly gelcaps before a basketball game to help quell "my old knee injury"?

We've all seen cases like this, but they're all pretty crazy. If your knee is in pain whenever you play basketball, pretending the pain is gone won't make your knee any better. Hiding daily headaches won't make them go away. Sucking back Midols doesn't mean that your "cramps are gone", it just means that you don't feel them any more. Your body is still yelling at you.

I agree with your original (a) vs. (b) statement, but I'm very worried that you didn't identify pain-killers as type (a).

Re:Not good.....

[MoogMan]

Why would an intelligence designer create a structure that serves no purpose?

- Talking point at intergalactic parties.
- For a laugh.
- Boredom.
- Because they were drunk.
- ? Profit!
- Cowboyneal

Re:Not good.....

[molarmass192]

Interesting ... I really dislike chocolate. I've disliked it since I was very young. The best I can tell people is that it has a medicine-ish taste to me that is really unenjoyable. Restaurant desert menus really suck if you don't like chocolate, although apparently I'm in a small minority of the population. Your post got me thinking and apparently there's a genetic basis for this with regards to being able to pickup the taste of a normally tasteless chemical (couldn't pin down the name) found in chocolate. Anyhow, all that to say that I can pickup the (nasty) taste of chocolate at trace level quantities, so I'm not surprised if it affects some people in a negative way!

Re:Not good.....

[umkhhh]

What I do not understand is rationale behind abusing oneself in order to do more work (I assume that work is primary cause). Getting tired is a way my body and brain tells me that the blood suckers had sucked enough for today. It is good for them and for me that it works this way. If they think otherwise they move their enterprise to china and I search for people with brains that can use my services in intelligent manner.

I knew (and in some cases still do know) people abusing themselves with drugs and/or alcohol. In no case it enhanced their work abilities. In some cases it may have increased their chances for promotion if they consumed drugs with their bosses. In some cases it killed them or made them sick.

If I were to abuse myself with drugs I would do it in a good company i.e. with friends. Still most likely drugs of choice would be barley products or weed. I guess after few joints I would even get the impression that my working abilities increase rapidly :)

Re:Not good.....

[Frangible]

I would recommend purchasing a lamp with a small (5W or so) bulb to simulate the "dusk" lighting prior to darkness (for about an hour), and avoiding doing anything particularly engaging / entertaining during this period so as to not increase cortisol and catecholamine levels. Reading, listening to music (perhaps more Enya than Slayer - Reign of Blood), meditation etc are good to do during this period.

After about a week of such practice myself I noticed around that time, before I even would meditate or try to relax, I would automatically do so-- my hands had pronounced vasodilation, and I felt a feeling of warmth, limb heaviness, and relaxation. Doing nothing doesn't sound terribly appealing, but it has its benefits. I also tend to wake up consistently without an alarm now.

Alternatively, you can truly be in sync with the sun during the winter months and sleep a lot -- but I try to emulate summer lighting year round.

As a follow-up, pretty much anything is entrainable as a rhythm -- especially food/eating. And exercise. Do those things consistently, and you'll have low hunger outside of regular meals (if they're sufficient) and higher energy levels around exercise times. In addition to central circadian rhythms, peripheral systems and tissues also have adaptive oscillations in response to external stimuli. Primitive, yet something that benefits us if we plan around it.

Re:Not good.....

[The Blow Leprechaun]

Personally, I'm not too worried about how our cognitive processes will react. If we no longer have REM time, but need the functions provided by it, all of us who can't cope will go crazy and the rest will be fine and successive generations will have less of a problem.

But we shouldn't overlook the physical consequences of not sleeping. I imagine extended periods without sleep would put tremendous additional wear and tear on our eyes, not to mention our hearts.

Re:Not good.....

[dubbreak]

..everyone having an IQ of 300, being able to sleep 4 hours a week..

Bye bye capitalism and hello socialism.

Re:Not good.....

[fw3]

as it takes at least a week to start a polyphasic sleep schedule, sticking with it for only a month wouldn't make much sense .. in any case, I've known people who've done it for several months to a year or more and said it worked well.

Re:Not good.....

[gd23ka]

I'm with you a 100% on this one. Since you spoke as a scientist, I'll continue
as a computer geek then:

"...and its thought that REM sleep may be necessary for memory consolidation."

I don't think that skipping out to much on garbage collection is a good
idea.

And you're right. At least for me, cognitive abilities and memory degrades after
after 16 hours of "uptime" and largely ceases after 24. I have made some of my
worst, almost deadly mistakes after 32 hours when sleep deprivation euphoria
fooled me into thinking I was wide awake, capable and ready for it.

Re:Not good.....

[Schmendr1ck]

A little bit of fact checking here:

1) We actually do know quite a bit about what the brain does during REM sleep, and there are several theories on why REM sleep is necessary. But yes, these are theories and we don't know for certain which one, if any, is correct.
2) I was unable to find any scientific evidence or reported cases of permanent psychological damage or death due to sleep deprivation, except in the case of an exceedingly rare biological disorder called Fatal Familial Insomnia. Of course, sleep deprivation can cause errors in judgment and reduced reaction time that can lead to death, but that wasn't what the parent meant.
3) The radio DJ the parent mentions was a guy named Peter Tripp. Yes, he did a publicity stunt where he stayed awake for about 10 days and hallucinated. However, he lost his job because he was caught accepting thousands of dollars in payola from the record companies. He more likely "faded into obscurity" because of the scandal. Shortly afterwards he got out of the radio business and into other careers where he was more successful.

This doesn't mean I disagree - I think drug-induced sleep deprivation has the potential for serious side effects and needs a heck of a lot more study before we all start taking our morning Modafinil. However, don't support a good argument with bad data. (Most of this info comes from Wikipedia - see Sleep Deprivation, Peter Tripp, and Fatal Familial Insomnia. All three entries appear to be well-referenced, feel free to spend an afternoon checking it out.)

Re:Not good.....

[espressojim]

There's some complications to this. There is a physical structure to DNA. What you wind up having in populations is that segments of chromosomes travel in populations (these are haplotypes.) When you have something particularly interesting on some segment (something under positive selection), that entire segment will be kept (as the segment is slowly broken down by recombination, but that can take a LONG time.)

I'd argue that anything that takes energy to maintain but serves no function would be not be selected for. See: Antibiotic resistance in bacteria where their enviornment does not contain the resistance. Bacteria that are not resistant have more energy for reproduction, thus spread faster.

Selection is all about enviornment, though it's got a lot of interesting wrinkles that prevent us (population geneticists - though I can't call myself a 'real' one, as I do bioinformatics on population genetic data) from fully comprehending how all the inputs/outputs are wired together.

Re:Not good.....

[MacJedi]

What really amazes me is that animals as simple and as unrelated to humans as fruit flies need sleep and will die if prevented from sleeping (as will higher animals.) And that some of the genes associed with sleep in fruit flies (Shaker and Clock) are well conserved into vertebrates and may play similar roles. Whatever role sleep plays, it must be vitally important.

Re:Not good.....

[EzraSj]

You seem to be forgetting that most of our ancestors lived, and slept, in trees - far away from most potential predators.

Re:Not good.....

[enderai]

Actually, tonsils serve an important role in the immune system according to research done in the past 20(?) years or so. They act collectors of new bugs so that your body can build up antibodies. In other words, they get "sick" so you don't.

Re:Not good.....

[stunt_penguin]

What would be 100x more impressive is a drug that will eradicate the need for waking, that's when I'll sit up and take notice! (or, rather, wake up and take some).

We can all live in hope :)

Re:Not good.....

[odourpreventer]

There's more to that. Cats see in the dark better than us thanks to huge pupils and some sort of reflective coating on the back of their eyes bouncing the light back on the "seeing" cells. On the other hand, humans see much better in daylight because of the same reasons. It's a trade-off.

As for birds, I thought their spectrum of vision was shifted into the UV frequencies. The colours they see are completely different from ours, but not necessarily more of them.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't notice gross size changes overnight. What I do see are changes in facial shape. This is particularly true for ages up to about 30 months --- everything will be the same for a long time and then over single night some part of the face is shaped a little differently. These observation are from slightly larger sample size (n=4).

Re:Not good.....

[iidoru]

you do know that your one eye (the one that you closed) provides input to both hemispheres of the brain and your brainstem - so conversly the other eye (which is reading /.) is providing input to both sides of the brain and your brainstem - hence not a lot of relaxing going on (on a global brain scale)..

Re:Not good.....

[Coulson]

It apparently works by shutting off input to half of the brain, letting that half relax.

Both eyes are connected to both hemispheres of your brain. It's not that everything seen by your left eye is processed by the right half of your brain: everything seen on the left half of your visual field -- regardless of which eye -- is processed by the right side of your brain.

Closing one eye does not cut off input to half your brain. You'd have to close the left half of both eyes, which isn't going to work unless you have some crazy eyelids.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

An AC relates a tale of walking with one's eyes shut:

"Funny, I do something similar when walking and very tired (and wearing sunglasses too, btw). I aim a straight line with no people or obstacles and close *both* eyes for some 10-15 seconds, then open up to correct track and re-scan the surroundings. It's amazingly relaxing, but works best where there the ground is all flat and there's not much people around."

I did this all the time when walking to school as a kid. I got to where I could go the most part of a city block (on the sidewalk or in the alley) on a single "snapshot" (I never once ran into anything, either). It is indeed relaxing, and hones your "location sense" as well.

I still do it sometimes while walking down my own rather long driveway (300 feet to the gate).

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, when I work on the computer or watch TV later at night, I have a habit of turning off *all* the other lights and I tend to get around without turning on any (or at least, very many) lights after a certain point.

I guess that's a good idea, then?

Re:Not good.....

[kelnos]

I'm in California; not much better: sunrise at 6:55am, sunset at 4:54pm. Not really sure what the parent means about staying "in sync with the sun." I suspect he doesn't actually mean to wake with sunrise and go to sleep with sunset, since that's really not terribly practical, even in the middle of the summer. Well, I suppose it could be for a period in the summer, when sunset pushes past 8pm here, but that wouldn't last for very long.

Re:Not good.....

[Rosonowski]

That being said, i'm really glad i do have the pain meds for my wisdom teeth coming in... i can't afford to have them pulled for a couple weeks.

Re:Not good.....

[iidoru]

Lets take this apart some more: In fact, there are animals that don't appear to sleep, but actually do (dolphins, for example). What they do is sleep half their body and brain at a time. So there's obviously some benefit, as they've evolved the necessity to remain awake, but still get the sleep they need.

yes they maybe sleeping, but are they at the same time awake ? Just beacuse they are swimming does not mean that they are awake. AFAIK dolphins do not hunt, eat or mate with one half of their brain asleep. More to the point - you are assuming that because most humans do not move during sleep (sleep-walking anyone?) sleep is associated with a lack of movement.

(Unless it really happens to be some anomaly of evolution (another strike against creationism), like the appendix or spleen, that affects basically the entire population of living creatures). But I would think the dolphins proved otherwise, since they'd be the first to do away completely with sleep.

you make it sound like the spleen is a disease. just because we can do without it (true for almost every appendix, not true for every spleen - look up OPS(S)I - does not mean that it does not have a function. Same btw could be said about the frontal lobes of the brain - you could do without large parts of them, keep reading /. and some people might not even notice..

Re:Not good.....

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

I heard once in a psychology class (but have been unable to corroborate) that we too would be able to see in the UV range were it not for our lenses. The human eye lens is apparently slightly yellow and this filters out the UV. Patients who were given early artificial lenses reported being able to see new colours because the artificial lenses were clear.

Re:Not good.....

[bergeron76]

The failure in your arguement is that you assume the appendix isn't an "evolving" organ. Perhaps, it may take a few generations for it to become a useful bodily organ. Cutting it off prematurely is probably doing more to human mammals than leaving it (at least until you have a few kids).

Re:Not good.....

[lawpoop]

You seem to be forgetting that our ancestors are theorized to have been preyed upon by hawks, eagles, and large tree-climbing cats.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well assuming you are not sleeping out in the open, you're not creating a trail (prints or scent), and if you're hidden in brush, a burrow, cave, etc. you're even less conspicuous and likely to be found.

How many times on nature shows do you see predators pouncing on sleeping prey? (yes I know it's anecdotal, but you get the idea).

Re:Not good.....

[Dirtside]

Again, all apochyphal information

Actually, you mean anecdotal information. Apocryphal means "made up" or "fictitious". :)

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

I know the physiology. But the *effect* seems to be that part of the brain feels free to shut down for a while, simulating a nap. When it works (which isn't 100%) the result is quite definite.

Re:Not good.....

[A beautiful mind]

I was unable to find any scientific evidence or reported cases of permanent psychological damage or death due to sleep deprivation, except in the case of an exceedingly rare biological disorder called Fatal Familial Insomnia. Of course, sleep deprivation can cause errors in judgment and reduced reaction time that can lead to death, but that wasn't what the parent meant.

Sleep deprivation can (but not necessarily will) kill you faster than dieing of hunger or thirst, that is a proven fact as far as I know. The few people in South Korea that have died in gaming marathons illustrate the point well. There were some experiments into how long can someone stay awake and stuff like that in a controlled environment. Things got really bad after 10 days.

Re:Not good.....

[Vellmont]

Yeah, er, that article about the appendix is a bit wrong, or at least misleading;

Ok, that's certainly possible. Then provide a reference that's correct.

and you're quoting it out of context by ignoring the beginning paragraph about how the appendix connects.

The context is a discussion about how the appendix may or may not be a vestigial organ, and how people born without an appendix seem to have no impaired immune, or GI functioning. The paragraph I quoted nicely refutes the idea that it's completely decided and accepted that it's NOT a vestigial organ. Again, if you have other evidence or references that refute Wikipedia, present it. I fail to see how describing the structure of the appendix and what it's connected to provide evidence that it serves any purpose.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm. I wouldn't try this on the road. Mind, it's mostly because I can see with only one eye ;) It's a shame it's been since my birth, otherwise my brain wouldn't have wired to accommondate this and I'd be half-asleep all the time.

Err, on a second thought this might explain why I nod off at every single lecture :-)

Re:Not good.....

[Eunuchswear]

Only if they have kids. Oh, sorry, you said geeks, never mind.

Evolutionary dead end.

Re:Not good.....

[Malkin]

I wake up instantly, in full fight-or-flight mode, if I hear foraging noises anywhere near where I'm sleeping. I've been awaken by things as small as large insects foraging in my vicinity. I suspect that this is an old, throwback survival trait. While we may be vulnerable to other humans, I don't think we were ever that vulnerable to foraging animals at all. I think our ancestors probably woke up instantly if there were animals sniffing around.

Re:Not good.....

[Vellmont]

My understanding of natural selection is that genes naturally decay through incremental mutations. If a mutation is detrimental to the organism's survival, then it will not be passed on to future generations. Traits that no longer serve a purpose will decay because there is no pressure to preserve them;

The question is more how long would it take for the human population to evolve to the point where the appendix disapeers? Right now there's some people born without an appendix (I don't know if it's developmental or genetic). Let's assume it's genetic. Unless these people have an advantage over others with an appendix, this trait won't spread very far (about as far as people with an appendix). If what you say is correct, the appendix might fully evolve out of everyone, but it might just take a looong time (even in evolutionary time) since you'd essentially have wait for the genes coding for an appendix to "decay" within the human population.

Re:Not good.....

[Saxerman]

There was a famous radio DJ in the 1950's that went without sleep for several days on air - by about the 4th day, he reportedly was seeing spiders everywhere and was babbling pretty much incoherently. His family and friends reported that he was never the same again, and he lost his job and faded into obscurity shortly afterwards.

The DJ was one Peter Tripp from New York.

Re:Not good.....

[bar-agent]

Laying still in a bed for a third of the day saves a lot of energy that would otherwise have to be sought out.

There must be more to it than that. As another poster pointed out, animals, even fruit flies, die if not allowed to sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[mabhatter654]

those are all sleep disorders with huge consequences in our awake life... the parent is a sleep researcher, that's what they do. Many, many people have those problems and even "trivial" things like snoring actually affect your progression thru the sleep levels.. they force your body into "panic" mode to change your position which stops REM sleep. Other things like the tossing and twitching are a sign of "restless leg syndrome" a combination of built up stress and lack of physical exercise... i.e. being a coding geek at a desk 16 hours a day doesn't generate the chemicals your BODY needs to function generated by large scale muscle use... muscles rebel by twitching, hearts don't like it either.

With all the sleep issues starting to come to the front of medical science lately, it's amazing ANYBODY is allowed to publish this research! OF course, look at how the "professionals" in medicine run their lives... you'd think DOCTORS would also focus on getting proper nutrition, sleep, exercise to improve themselves during internships and such...yet they are famous for 36-48 hour shifts with minimal sleep!!! Sleep researches have a steady stream of third shifters in their clinics... right about the time they start having serious physical issues like heart trouble, and anxiety attacks... due to the messed up sleep cycles. OUR 24x7 society doesn't work... it breaks tons of people. You'd think for being SMART beings we'd work WITH our biological necessities to be productive, not AGAINST them.

Re:Not good.....

[metamatic]

I really dislike chocolate. I've disliked it since I was very young. The best I can tell people is that it has a medicine-ish taste to me that is really unenjoyable.

I want a prescription of whatever you're on.

Re:Not good.....

[Dzonatas]

Interesting...

Has anybody done a study to find if the rapid eye movement (REM) is related to the eye movement found in the study of natural language processing (NLP)? This would explain why NLP techniques works where one needs to focus on eye movement for memory retrieval because it would be in relation to the REM positions in memory consolidation.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Statements like that (e.g., the appendix and spleen do not perform necessary functions) make evolutionists look stupid.

It's quite obvious that 99% of the people who believe in evolution are idiots anyway, and can't explain their (dogmatic, more fanatical than some guy named achmed with a dynamite jacket) beliefs.

Re:Not good.....

[crossmr]

perhaps thats evolution at work. Disturbing our sleep to get us used to working on less. Now that we no longer need sleep for the possible reason it developed, perhaps we're moving away from it.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually apocryphal means "of questionable authenticity". But your right, the poster probably wasn't questioning the authenticity of his observations, rather he was trying to indicate his conclusions were based on a few, non-scientifically controlled, observations.

Re:Not good.....

[metamatic]

9 to 6 is a "rat race"??? Where do I apply for THAT tech job? I suppose you had weekends off, too?

In my experience IBM is 9 to 6, weekends off. Home office, even.

Re:Not good.....

[PurifyYourMind]

Note that the spinal column expands during the night (after taking a beating / gravity through the day), so most people will wake up taller than they were when they went to bed.

Re:Not good.....

[jc42]

I've got four of the little bastards and I've never noticed them doing that. Now I'm gonna have to watch 'em for a while and try see it happen.

We found that it's easiest if you approach from the sleeping side, and walk quietly. Then sometimes you'll see the other eye wide open. If you start on the awake side, or make a noise, that side is likely to wake up the other side. Also, I don't know if all cockatiels do it, but ours seem to.

Are they doing this when they sleep on one foot with the other one tucked away?

Yeah, but I think that's how they always sleep. It's sort of a general bird thing. I don't think anyone knows why.

Re:Not good.....

[mabhatter654]

The electric light has only been around 100 years, that's barely a blip in how long humans have been around.. even for Young Earth Creationists. Bodies are hardwired to respond to sunlight.. it's a thing they do. Deviating too much screws us up. Unfortunately, the whole "industrial revolution" thing is about unnatural manipulation of materials to man's will. Unfortunately genetics don't bend quite as fast as technology creates new ways. Personally I started noticing SAD symptoms about the middle of October... just before time change. I work in IT, indoors, no windows all day. It's barely light when I start at 8 and nearly dark by 5:30 when I leave. I've walked out of my office at 4:30 on an overcast day an nearly threw up the "circadian" shock was so bad. So yes, there's something to our whole day-nite cycles. The French During the French Revolution tried to go to "decimal" calenders with nice even 10-day weeks... it failed miserably because people couldn't take it.

The trouble is that most of the evidence is philosophical rather than scientific at this point... lots of people KNOW how these things work, but the lawyers and scientist and manager call it superstition and force society into unnatural living conditions.

Re:Not good.....

[MrFebtober]

I believe we, and other primates, are among the very few mammals that have color vision. It has been theorized that social behavior in primates has favored color vision over time because of the importance of judging moods in others-- when faces flush with anger or pale from depression or illness. This is also thought to be why many primates do not have hair on their faces.

Social behavior can be a very powerful tool in evolution. It could be that because color vision became so important to our ancestors that in the process we gave up a lot of night vision capabilities and therefore gave up on being nocturnal. Another idea might be that night time, itself, was making social/facial communication too difficult for primates and so they evolved to be awake during the day instead. Then, good color vision began to be favored over mono-chrome nightvision do to the advantages of being able to tell good leaves from bad leaves, ripe fruit from unripe fruit, etc. Humans have a fantastic ability differentiating shades of green. that is no accident.

Re:Not good.....

[jc42]

Interesting ... I really dislike chocolate ... apparently there's a genetic basis for this with regards to being able to pickup the taste of a normally tasteless chemical (couldn't pin down the name) found in chocolate.

There are a number of chemical taste differences like this known and explained by researchers. One is that there's a chemical in cooked cabbage that only about 1% of the population can taste, and to them it's really delicious. To the rest of us, cooked cabbage just tastes like, uh, cooked cabbage, and isn't particularly good or bad tasting. I think raw cabbage tastes better than cooked, so I'm obvious not one of the 1%.

Another funny example was an explanation I read once of the "New Coke" fiasco. They had done a randomized taste test and found that most people liked the new formulation better than the old Coca Cola. So they released it, and after the marketing disaster, they figured out why. The old Coke contained vanilla and was lower in sugar (to make up for vanilla's sweetness). The new formulation had vanillin, or "artificial vanilla". It turns out that between 5% and 10% of the population can taste vanilla. To the rest, "plain vanilla" pretty much means "bland and tasteless", but to those sensitive to it, vanilla is one of the world's best flavors (and is fairly sweet). It seems that Coca Cola's market wasn't random, but included mostly the vanilla-sensitive people. To everyone else, it was just a somewhat harsh cola, because of the lower sugar content. But to their market, the New Coke was merely sweet, and didn't include any vanilla, which was why they liked the old Coke. They went back to the old formula with real vanilla, and recovered their market share (which also includes vanilla insensitives who just like their cola less sweet).

I found this interesting because, despite my cynical attitude toward such things, I had always found Coke better tasting than the other colas. This story explained why. I'm obviously one of the vanilla-sensitive types. And I have a daughter who's among the vanilla super-sensitives. She has always puzzled her friends by chosing vanilla ice cream over chocolate, which is an insane choice to most people. She can detect vanilla at a hundred paces, and knows when she enters a room if there's vanilla ice cream present. But it has to be real vanilla, because the artificial stuff doesn't taste or smell much like vanilla.

Anyway, there's a growing list of such taste sensitivities that have been documented and explained by medical research. In some cases, the genetics behind the sensitivity is known, but that's mostly future research.

Re:Not good.....

[gardyloo]

"Most bone growth occurs at night, study finds"

      Every adolescent human male finds this out. Beavis and Butthead did a research project on it, too, if I remember correctly.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so what? I wont even argue against any of your points (none of which are backed up by a **single** fact), Ill grant you all of them. You choose the way you want to live, Ill choose the way I want to live. Fair enough?

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to understand evolution if you think an appendectomy has any effect either way. The notion of an organ evolving out of uselessness is indicative of that too.

It is useless, and the human genome doesn't have a 'plan' to assign it a function. Any body part that's one popcorn hull away from life-threatening-infection is a defect, and I'd be happy to have the little SOB clipped off anytime I'm undergoing surgery anywhere near there.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I do.

Re:Not good.....

[Kanasta]

Real question:

Mums now: Why can't you study more and be smart like little Bobby down the street?

Mums later(?): Why can't you take memory enhancers and be smart like little Bobby down the street?

Re:Not good.....

[True Vox]

Have you SEEN his wife? All due respect, but YUMMY!

Re:Not good.....

[scottv67]

"restless leg syndrome" a combination of built up stress and lack of physical exercise...

Nice try. Restless Leg Syndrome is not a combination of built-up stress and lack of physical exercise. Until you become more familiar with that disorder, you would be better-off sitting quietly and reading the posts from the sleep docs....

-Scott <==Suffers from RLS

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

An AC says,

"Hm. I wouldn't try this on the road. Mind, it's mostly because I can see with only one eye ;) It's a shame it's been since my birth, otherwise my brain wouldn't have wired to accommondate this and I'd be half-asleep all the time. -- Err, on a second thought this might explain why I nod off at every single lecture :-)"

I wonder if that was my problem in the 9th grade... sleepwalking to school :)

Re:Not good.....

[alienmole]

You might just have unconsciously trained yourself to relax when one eye is shut, i.e. it may have nothing to do with the physiology. Doing such experiments on yourself is notoriously unreliable, and unless you've gone to some effort to rule out other explanations, the one you've hit on is more likely to be wrong than right.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

well, I have an 8-4 tech job in the UK, and that's considered pretty standard. You can work weekends if you like, but not many people really bother.

Is this uncommon in the US? Not many people in the UK at all would work more than that, and those that do, generally have a poorer quality of life despite the extra money.

Re:Not good.....

[Valdrax]

That just means you're doing it wrong.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

The one-eye-shut pseudo-nap wasn't trained; it was discovered by accident. It worked this way the very first time I did it. (I even remember where I was at the time.... on I-90 going from Billings to Bozeman MT.) I was rather surprised, as the "nap" effect was quite unexpected, and wasn't noticed til I opened the eye and had that "suddenly refreshed" feeling you get when you wake up from a good light nap.

The nearest previous anything was walking to Jr.High with BOTH eyes shut (like another poster, I could take a "snapshot" and walk blind for some distance -- most of a city block when I was in practice) but the effect is NOT the same. Both eyes shut is somewhat relaxing, but results in heightened awareness, not naptime.

Re:Not good.....

[Randseed]

I'll chime in with an anecdotal report. I warn you that it's scary on a few different levels.

We routinely have our doctors run for thirty hours or more without sleep. Now with the new work hours restrictions it's somewhat better, but still bad. Medical schools, however, still routinely abuse medical students, just as mine did as recently as last year. This effectively means that people are up for 30 hours, then are expected to go to some lecture or some other inanity, then get to go home, only to do it again the next day. The end result is that they're up for close to 40 hours at a stretch, then have to drive home in rush hour traffic.

Three very serious things happened to me (and many others I worked with). First, we became almost narcoleptic, falling asleep while standing up, waking just quickly enough to avoid face-planting ourselves into the floor, the wall, or a body cavity. Second, we started seeing things, most of the time ridiculous things, like thinking that Bugs Bunny was actually in someone's chest cavity (the diaphragmatic cura look like rabbit ears if you have an imagination), which led to us doing things like blurting out answers to questions that weren't even asked, and that kind of thing. Third, our personalities changed dramatically. A year later, most of us have actually recovered from that three month hell, but we all have a much shorter fuse too, and a far lower tolerance for bullshit.

Sleep is necessary. If nothing else, it allows one to consolidate memories into long term, which would explain why I literally don't remember half or more of that three months of my life. I wish I had Provigil during that time, because it would have smoothed over the effects a great deal. But I didn't. And I can only imagine what would happen if someone tried to use modanifil for days and days without a break.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always wondered about the need for sleep. For an animal to allow itself to go into an extremely vulnerable state every day for hours it must have a VERY good reason for doing so. The fact that sleep has been passed along in our genes even in the face of natural selection (sorry creationist museum) shows this. I think we've barely penetrated the real reasons for sleep.

More likely than not, it proved problematic for early organism to adapt to both daylight and nightime, so they would invariably be more inactive during one than the other.

Of course, given the inactive period, evolution would eventually select for those organisms which evolved to make better use of that time -- e.g. by performing rest and repair functions. For us big-brains, processing long-term memories is done there (to link and cross-reference them... hence the "wake up shouting eureka" factor observed by certain scientists.)

Since the day-night cycle has been here since the planet solidified, the circadian rhythm has become a feature of nearly all life on earth. IMO that does not bode well for 24/7 life, at least with our current brains... the circadian rhythms run too "deep". We'd have to re-engineer nearly everything.

I have delayed sleep-phase syndrome *and* hypersomnia; my body wants 11 hours of sleep a night, at least, and it loathes the 24-hour rhythm (it wants 26-28 or so). I also have a long-term memory like a bear trap. (Short-term blows chu -- crap, I had a point here, what was it?)

Speaking for myself, I look forward to the new tools to help me "corral" sleep. But I don't expect a "cure" for something as built-in as that... I think our best bet is to find out what sleep does for us, and figure out how to get that done in less time, and by an advantageous schedule.

Re:Not good.....

[JonathanR]

Is RLS related to morning wood?

Re:Not good.....

[From A Far Away Land]

The most recent stuff I've heard about sleep study, had to do with the idea of studying sleep in pre-industrial humans. It turns out there's a strong case to be made that humans routinely awoke during the middle of the night, and had a "second sleep" about an hour after waking in the dark. I can't help but think that might stem back to a time we were more regularly hunted, and would have to check for changing circumstances in our safety.

Re:Not good.....

[scottv67]

Is RLS related to morning wood?

I fail to see any humor in your comment.

Re:Not good.....

[scottv67]

Speaking as a scientist who used to study sleep and sleep disorders, I have to say this is troubling. Sleep has evolved for a purpose and a number of studies have shown that sleep is necessary or crucial to consolidate long term memories, stabilize mood and more.

Dr. Jones, I agree with everything you said in your post. I especially like the detailed description of the various stages of sleep. I take Provigil every day to suppress the daytime sleepiness from Restless Leg Syndrome. While the drug provides a short-term reprieve from feeling drowsy, it is not a "get out of jail free card". Eventually (four to six hours), the drug wears off and the tired feeling comes back hard. I don't know what would happen if I took one every six hours and attempted to stay up around-the-clock. I would imagine that by the 24th hour, I'd be totally useless at work and a danger on the highway.

As you stated in your post, sleep (which is not really well understood) is definitely vital to our well-being. People who mess with their sleep schedules by taking drugs or messing with their schedules are playing with fire. I go to sleep at the same time every night and try to get eight hours of sleep.

Re:Not good.....

[GooberToo]

Or...perhaps sleeping women made for easy mating targets which ensured sleep continued to be passed on. Those that required more sleep were more likely to be mated by powling males, resulting in offspring which carry on "sleep" genes.

I'm constantly surprised how often people assume that just because a gene is passed on it implies that there as to be some deep, dark secret. There exists any number of mundane reasons a specific set of genes were passed on....and not all of them are because they allow us to run faster and farther.

Re:Not good.....

[GooberToo]

There exists a man that is thought to have NEVER slept in his life time; at least not as an adult. I've seem him on late night TV many moons ago. It seems he served in the navy and he had a standing bet of one paycheck to anyone, if anyone ever caught him sleeping. Supposedly he never had to pay.

If true, this suggests so long as required brain chemistry is properly maintained, sleep is actually not required.

Re:Not good.....

[sillybilly]

When I'm under stress, I find the need for 12 hr sleep cycles. When life is good, 8-9 hrs. That's too much for a normal 8 to 5 40 hr weekdays, get 5-8 hrs, so Saturday is the major catchup day, 12-14 hrs. Some of it is half awake, especially late in the morning about 2 hrs of semi conscious "sleep", but I find myself thinking through reasonings that when I wake I can barely catch and follow, thinking hard how I went from that topic to that topic, when it seemed so "connected" and fitting together when half asleep, and it's very hard to keep up with the line of reasoning when awake, it takes a tremendous effort. If you have a very complicated problem that you're unable to fix, too many details, or learning something brand new that doesn't fit in your head, pretty much the only thing you need is to enumerate everything you know, try to remember as many details as possible without trying to solve the problem, just getting to know it from many angles, then after a night's sleep, or after a couple night's sleep, you'll be a different person - either know the solution to a tough problem, of own an instinctive knowledge of something you just learned and never thought possible you'd ever "know", but you'll feel like you know it, and you will know it in every sense humans can know something.

Re:Not good.....

[Kelz]

Deer DO sleep in dens, though not underground ones. Usually small clearings in a large clump of trees (one that would obstruct the passing predator's view.

Re:Not good.....

[shawb]

Dolphins do this as well, presumably because they need to surface to breathe.

Re:Not good.....

[uncoveror]

The military has tried for decades to make soldiers who don't have to sleep through use of drugs. This has led to bad results many times. After enough time without sleep, there will be a chemical imbalance in the brain causing a psychotic break from reality. A state between REM and wakefulness can occur when reality and dream imagery become indistinguishable. Test subjects have gone on killing sprees against people they believed were some kind of nightmare monsters. This is not something we should be messing around with. We need sleep. Period!

Re:Not good.....

[oohshiny]

In support of the nocturnal mammal evolution theory, our vision system has only three colors whereas most non-mammals have four.

Actually, current thinking is that somewhere along the line, our ancestors lost all color vision (or were down to two colors), and humans managed to re-evolve color vision.

Re:Not good.....

[cthulhu11]

I'm not sure about other non-mammalian / pre-mammalian animals, but the modern reptiles with which I'm familar certainly sleep themselves. Some are diurnal, some noctural, some crepuscular, but AFAIK they all sleep sometime.

Re:Not good.....

[mikiN]

ObWikipediaLink: Al Herpin, the "Man Who Never Slept."

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Do any of these things sound like "happiness" you would take a pill for? Shut down the computer and TV, and artificial lighting sources at least an hour before bed. Relax, in dim light. Train yourself with a normal schedule in sync with the sun. You'll have greater alertness during the day, lower hunger, higher energy, better memory, and sleep better.

It'd be nice to be able to be able to maintain a schedule that rises and falls with the sun, and to be able to not rely on artificial sources of light. Being located about 45 degrees North, though, means that daytime in early December is from about 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the Ubermann theory where you sleep 20 minutes a day for 6 times a day getting in a REM state?

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you *are* a eukaryote

No, we're made up of eukaryotes. That's like saying "a house is a brick"

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought of dreaming as our brains playing out various 'scenarios' for training purposes.

without those, i can see why creativity and ability to handle life properly suffers.

Re:Not good.....

[MightyYar]

8-4 is more-or-less unheard of in the US. People here work atrocious hours. Not that you have to, but you certainly make more money when you do. There aren't any laws that effectively limit how much you can work, so people just work all of the time.

Personally, I'm on a pretty relaxed schedule since I just had a daughter and I became an independent contractor. This lets me work when I have time. This is good because my wife is in her medical residency, so is never home.

Re:Not good.....

[mrchaotica]

Sleep researches have a steady stream of third shifters in their clinics... right about the time they start having serious physical issues like heart trouble, and anxiety attacks... due to the messed up sleep cycles. OUR 24x7 society doesn't work... it breaks tons of people.

There's nothing wrong with having a 3rd shift or 24/7 society, because it only matters that people sleep 8 hours out of every 24 in a regular cycle -- it doesn't matter which 8 hours it is. The real problem is twofold: that pesky daylight that screws up people's (subconscious) perception of time, and the fact that there aren't enough people on offset cycles to run everything, so they can't avoid getting up in the middle of their "night" in order to accomplish necessary things (i.e. dealing with "9 to 5" organizations). If people who worked third shift always had the light in their environment match their schedule, and could actually sleep all day, they'd be fine.

Re:Not good.....

[SRA8]

But then again, menstruation has also evolved for a reason. Yet there are drugs now which limit a woman to 4 cycles a year. They are launching one which eliminates it alltogether. I'm not justifying sleep drugs, just saying that this trend started a while back...

Re:Not good.....

[Alsee]

So, the solution is to clone some dinosaurs...
strap saddles on their backs...
watch creationists walk up and try to ride them...
and get eaten.

Well I guess that's one way to clean the gene pool.

-

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolutionists make up the rules as they go, so they are never wrong nor are they ever stupid.

Re:Not good.....

[surprise_audit]

Playing devil's advocate here: And the problem with this is? Isn't it in man's nature to attempt to improve themselves?

I'd say that the problem is that it's all too artificial. It's no longer a question of a better, smarter, stronger individual surviving long enough to breed, it's a question of how often that individual can be conned into buying some product. You too can look cooler, smarter, more interesting, if you just buy this car/watch/jacket/hat/etc. Get a face lift, get bigger boobs, fix that bald spot, bleach your teeth. Make your grass greener, your house warmer/cooler, get a fast-looking car, get an 8-person SUV for a family of 3 and never mind the low milage. That's what's driving "evolution" now.

Did you know suits are making a comeback?? Mmm, gotta go out and buy a couple of suits for work. Why?? Well, the nice man a Men's Wearhouse said so... Will I work better/longer/smarter/harder?? Nope. Will anyone care if I wear a suit?? Nope. I work nights and often don't see more than about 5 people in the building all night. Daytime there's a slight possibility of seeing client in the building, but business casual is usually fine.

Follow the money. That's what's driving evolution these days.

Re:Not good.....

[chazbot]

There have been studies that resulted in death for other mammals. Rats last about four weeks. Dogs last a couple of months.

Re:Not good.....

[headonfire]

In the article you yourself linked, Vermiform Appendix the first paragraph:

In human anatomy, the vermiform appendix (or appendix, pl. appendices) is a blind ended tube connected to the cecum (or internationally, "caecum"). It develops embryologically from the cecum. The term vermiform comes from Latin and means "wormlike in appearance". The cecum is the first pouch-like structure of the colon. The appendix is near the junction of the small intestines and large intestines.

The paragraph you quoted is from further down in the wiki article -

One explanation has been that the appendix is a vestigial structure with no current purpose.[citation needed] The appendix is thought to have descended from an organ in our distant herbivorous ancestors called the cecum (or caecum). The cecum is maintained in modern herbivores, where it houses the bacteria that digest cellulose, a chemically tough carbohydrate that these animals could not otherwise utilize. The human appendix contains no significant number of these bacteria, and cellulose is indigestible to us. It seems likely that the appendix lost this function before our ancestors became recognizably human.

The article is directly contradicting itself. Further, that whole paragraph is lacking citation, and should probably be removed. I'm not debating about the appendix and it's function or lack thereof, here; I'm stating that what Wikipedia says about the cecum is incorrect. Using it as evidence for your argument is fallacious, and you need to find another source.

To check out Wikipedia on the cecum, let's go to Cecum and take a look.

The cecum or caecum (from the Latin caecus meaning blind) is a pouch connected to the ascending colon of the large intestine and the ileum. It is separated from the ileum by the ileocecal valve (ICV) or Bauhin's valve, and is considered to be the beginning of the large intestine.

Which article is correct? Pick up an anatomy book, or try a google for "cecum" and pick anything but Wikipedia. From one of the higher links, Medterms.com:

Cecum: The cecum (also spelled caecum), the first portion of the large bowel, situated in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen. The cecum receives fecal material from the small bowel (ileum) which opens into it. The appendix is attached to the cecum. The word "cecum" comes from the Latin "caecus" meaning "blind." This refers to the fact that the bottom of the cecum is a blind pouch (a cul de sac) leading nowhere.

My final point: The appendix is not "descended from an organ in our distant herbivorous ancestors called the cecum". We have a cecum in our bodies currently, and it is what the appendix happens to dangle from. This is basic, high school and first-year anatomy. Is that good enough?

Re:Not good.....

[Mondor]

"there are five generally accepted states of sleep separate from consciousness."

So, it's like, a run levels in Linux? That makes sense.

Re:Not good.....

[Tweekster]

Here is one thought on the subject.
first of all, this drug is not new. its about 3 years old atleast.

Sleep is simply a process, a series of biochemical reactions. that is all. it does an amazing amount for a person or animal, but it is still a series of processes. so in that line, why couldnt a chemical create the same result. sure like most drugs, it will not be perfect, but if it could take sleep of 8-12 hours down to 1-2, as a nice combo. why couldnt a drug recreate sleep for the mind and body, i see no reason why it couldnt.

all it takes is the right chemical reactions.

personally i love sleep, it is my time to do nothing, be away from the hustle and bustle of life. then again, if the right drug came along and i could go from 5-7 hours of sleep to 1-3 and still feel like i was refreshed, then why the hell not.

i doubt we could ever remove sleep totally, atleast in a perfect health sense, however, most drugs are not perfect, but they can reduce _____ whatever it may be

Re:Not good.....

[uvajed_ekil]

And yet we snore, toss and turn, twitch, and sometimes talk in our sleep. Nothing says easy meal more than a loud unconscious mammal.

True, but we are also pretty far removed from the earliest mammals.

Re:Not good.....

[TheLink]

Sure, but the proposed explanation for sleep as "so that mammals would be still" is still ridiculous. Why not be still and fairly alert?

It is obvious that sleep is important enough for birds, dolphins etc to do it, and even workaround the requirement by having different parts of their brains take turns to sleep.

Also look up on sleep and migratory birds. Many don't sleep while flying at night, researchers have found that some seem to take micro naps during the day to make up for it (they might take micro naps while flying too but I haven't seen research on that yet ).

Basically all these animals work out a way to get some sleep, they haven't managed to work out a way to do _without_ sleep.

So I'd be surprised if humans will be able to do ok without sleep at all.

Re:Not good.....

[uvajed_ekil]

Yes, but how many predators, other than you, consider your wife "yummy"?

More than he'll ever know about, unless he decides to come home early some Tuesday! (sorry, just kidding)

Re:Not good.....

[Umuri]

http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&ne wsid=12673
Honestly, That's just one story of many that i take great interest in. I've found, and talked to many psychologists about this, that there are quite a number of activities that can replicate some of the affects of sleep, such as some forms of meditation or even reading a simple book.
If one has a quiet enough lifestyle, or merely takes time out to organize their mind and let it run it's background processes while retaining consciousness, is sleep really neccessary?
People say it must have a good reason since evolution hasn't done away with it, but what if that reason is just that we use up such a huge % of our brain during normal daytime activity of hunting, protection,etc, that we sleep so our brain can do it's normal background processes/cleanup/memory consolidation?

Re:Not good.....

[AK Marc]

Aspirin inhibits the synthesis of prostaglandin pain mediators

And if that's all it does, what in that description explains the blood thinning properties? What other properties does it have that we haven't found?

Re:Not good.....

[Vellmont]

So your entire argument is essentially "Some things in Wikipedia are misleading or unclear, so you obviously there's no controversy about whether the appendix is vestigial." Kind of a funny argument.

Maybe you missed the point that I wasn't try to make any kind of statement about the cecum, where the appendix came from, etc. If you'll pay just a little context to the conversation you'll realize the entire argument was to point out that the function of the appendix is under scientific dispute. Several posts ago there was an AC who claimed that the whole thing was settled, and the appendix did serve a purpose, wasn't vestigial, and the parent post to his was completely and utterly wrong.

Your quibbles with the accuracy of some minor parts of Wikipedia really don't change the fact that there IS controversy about the function of the appendix, which is the original point I was trying to make.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

RLS sufferer...

It's NOT consistent. I can get RLS if I am in front of the computer all day long with no breaks or on a 5 day backpacking trip logging 5-25 miles per day. I can't really find a pattern, rhyme, or reason. Contrary to common belief, I have noticed that lots of excercise can CAUSE my RLS.

High sugar and/or high sodium content food before bedtime are also suspect. Low impact, mid-day excercise is not a problem. But it's NOT consistent.

-shakey joe

Re:Not good.....

[broude]

From what I understand of evolutionary theory, that's not really accurate. It takes the correct mutations to eliminate organs that no longer serve any purpose. As long as they don't provide any disadvantage, they're not going to be eliminated from the gene pool.

Just had my appendix burst last week. Was quite a disadvantage. But like most modern medicine, it stops evolution from weeding out heriditory lines with faulty organs.

Re:Not good.....

[MeltUp]

Hmmm, I do that too.

I go for bikerides, and especially on long downhill parts, I enjoy driving without hands, not using my legs (the slope keeps me going), and keeping my eyes closed for a few seconds. Your direction sense, hearing, balance and touch (you feel the wind "in more detail") become very aware. If you read this witohut having tried it, you might think it's dangerous, and you'd panic doing this, but somehow it's very relaxing, and I automaticaly start to breath slowly and deeply.

Even on fairly steep slopes (where you gain speed fast) this is enjoyable, but on these you can't risk closing your eyes for more than a second ;)

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

omeone who claimed to be able to do this

Eh, people claim to to have been buggered by Martians.

his method worked

How do you know that?

Re:Not good.....

[Gorshkov]

From the dictionary entry for conservative:
tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions

tending to != incapable of, or unwilling to

Isn't that kind of like saying that rocks "tend to" not move? Let me give you directions to a place I know that has witnessed many, many rockslides over the years. You can tell me how "tending to" do something means it'll never happen. But be sure to shout ... I'm gonna be off standing at a safe distance.

Thinking that it is stupid to throw out the practices of the past without examining the alternatives to see if they are better can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the "thing' involved.

From the definition of Liberal:
BROAD-MINDED; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms

"Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it"

Intentionally ignoring what has been done in the past, and changing for the sake of change, can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the "thing" involved.

Remarkable symmetry, don't you think?

Your own definition of Liberal also notably does not preclude being bound by OTHER things .... like PC, liberal orthodoxy, or ... dare I say it ... close-mindedness and intellectual arrogance.

But then again, I wouldn't know - I "tend to" be conservative.

Re:Not good.....

[Eivind]

The most likely explanation is that it's easier to be well-adapted to day or nigth and minimize chance of discovery and energy-waste in the other part of the day by being immobile.

If you're unable to run/figth effectively in the dark anyway, it may be that finding a reasonable secure place in the evening and thereafter staying put until morning is a winning strategy. Being awake and alert doesn't bring you anything unless you can successfully flee and/or figth the threat.

Re:Not good.....

[HatofPig]

"I just saw something incredibly cool. A big floating ball that lit up with every colour of the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."

"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"

Re:Not good.....

[Bertie]

You're telling me. I had mine removed twenty-odd years ago, back when they thought they did nothing but cause trouble, and ever since then I've caught every cough, sniffle and cold doing the rounds, and generally suffered from them more than everybody else around me.

Tonsils serve a purpose all right. As for arguments against intelligent design, look no further than the masterstroke that was putting our testicles on the outside. Intelligent design my back end. Either they got there by a process of evolution, or God's a woman.

Re:Not good.....

[Reziac]

I've done that on a bike too... completely different from the "one-eyed nap". With both eyes shut (or both hands off the handlebars) there's a pressing a need to keep track of your motion, yet you're able to relax and absorb from other senses in a different way than when your eyes/hands are involved. It teaches you to be more generally aware of your balance and more sensitive to your total surroundings. Ever notice how you could soon tell if you're passing a telephone pole? you do become aware of subtle changes in air pressure around such obstacles.

We've all seen blind people who navigate the world almost as well as if they were fully sighted, doubtless by way of the same sort of sensory "exercise". Similarly, cats navigate in the dark primarily by sensing such air pressure gradients (not the objects themselves) against their whiskers. In fact often the only symptom when a cat goes blind is that it'll start carrying its whiskers cranked all the way forward ALL the time.

Re:Not good.....

[Lars T.]

In the article you yourself linked, Vermiform Appendix the first paragraph:

In human anatomy, the vermiform appendix (or appendix, pl. appendices) is a blind ended tube connected to the cecum (or internationally, "caecum"). It develops embryologically from the cecum. The term vermiform comes from Latin and means "wormlike in appearance". The cecum is the first pouch-like structure of the colon. The appendix is near the junction of the small intestines and large intestines.

... says not a single thing about why having an appendix would in any way be useful. The contradiction is only in your mind, and probably stems from your misconception that the appendix is an neccessary part of the cecum, which non of the articles claim.

Re:Not good.....

[headonfire]

AUGH, doesn't anybody read? I'm not saying anything is necessary or not, and I'm not saying anything is derived from anything else! I'm saying that the article talks about the appendix as "being derived from an organ found in distant ancestors", with the implication that it no longer exists in humans, and that's simply not so. It may have changed, but we do, in fact, have an anatomical juncture call the 'cecum'. And, the appendix hangs from it. That's all I'm saying. No more, and no less.

To make this absolutely clear, again, from my post:

I'm not debating about the appendix and it's function or lack thereof

jesus, you folks are giving me twitches.

Re:Not good.....

[headonfire]

I don't care about any controversy over organ function, I'm not debating that. Yes, there's a discussion about it, has been for quite some time, probably will be for a long time. I'm not talking about physiology, I'm talking about a basic point of anatomy.

From my post:

I'm not debating about the appendix and it's function or lack thereof

and to duplicate myself, again:

I'm saying that the article talks about the appendix as "being derived from an organ found in distant ancestors", with the implication that it no longer exists in humans, and that's simply not so. Maybe it's changed since then, but we do, in fact, have an anatomical juncture call the 'cecum'. And, the appendix hangs from it. That's all I'm saying. No more, and no less.

Clear? Habla englais? OK. Go back to arguing physiology with the other folks who also don't have a medical education. I'm just an anatomy teacher, for christ's sake. Nothing to see here.

Re:Not good.....

[quenda]

(dolphins, for example). What they do is sleep half their body and brain at a time.

body? Ah!, that would explain the dolphins swimming in circles at night. I always wondered about that.

Re:Not good.....

[danielsfca2]

I get your point with regard to pain being there for a reason, but regarding the cramps thing...why use that as an example? With back pain or a sore wrist, I could envision the medical advice that pain is trying to give you: "Stop lifting so many heavy things" or "Stop typing in a bad position." But what exactly are menstrual cramps trying to tell the girl?
"Next month you'd better get pregnant or else you'll get cramps again!"
? I mean isn't there no real way to resolve that particular issue naturally (other than getting pregnant at every single opportunity. Which would be a pretty unreasonable request.)

Or maybe I'm being dense and not understanding the nature of this kind of cramps fully.

Re:Not good.....

[gatesvp]

I brought up cramps b/c they're very insidious. Fitness, diet, sleep all influence the length and severity of menstrual cramps. Yet when things go "menstrually awry" the first solution is typically birth control to regulate the cycle, reduce pain, reduce PMS, etc.

I have never heard nor met any girl (or woman) who was told that she would be required to maintain a health and fitness log for two months before being given pills. Those are all factors and we know that people lie about these things when convenient, but we're quicker to move straight to hormonal regulators rather than have someone track their own lifestyle and look for improvements.

I mention this elsewhere in the the thread, but I really think that we should just assume that pills are inherently dangerous and then take them with that in mind. The contraceptive pill may be in common use, but it is by no means non-invasive.

I'll admit that it's not 100%, but if regular exercise can drop the pain from Midol pain to Tylenol pain or from 10 pills to 3 pills, isn't that worth investigating? There is a place in the world for pills, but shouldn't pills be a last resort rather than first line of defense?

Re:Not good.....

[danielsfca2]

Interesting observation. This is especially relevant to me, because my wife's other medications preclude her from taking birth control pills. So she has a non-hormonal IUD for birth control. One of the things that causes for her is greatly increased the severity of cramps.

On this particular instance, I think you're forgetting one thing. Birth control pills do indeed lessen the severity and length of periods for most girls, but they're not *just* taken for that. I mean, many/most girls are mainly taking them to prevent pregnancy--not an easy problem to tackle without hormones, as we've learned ourselves. The non-hormonal method we chose has very real drawbacks. And condoms, while quite well suited for impromptu use when I was a teenager, quickly got tiring once I got into a long-term relationship, and later marriage.

I agree with you though, that I'd prefer for myself and my family to not need pills if there was a tolerable lifestyle change to alleviate or manage the problem.

Also, you just reminded of one particular variety of Midol I saw once that was priced at about $10 for like 24 pills and they contained nothing but 200mg ibuprofen. Hilarious, when generic ibuprofen is like $6 for 500 (or even more ridiculously cheap at Costco). ;)

Re:Not good.....

[gatesvp]

Thank you for opening this dialogue with me. I wanted to reference your post, b/c one of your sentences is worthy of mention: And condoms, while quite well suited for impromptu use when I was a teenager, quickly got tiring once I got into a long-term relationship.... But you've just mentioned the problems that your wife is having as a result of taking birth control.

There's a choice here: condoms, pills or both. So you and your wife have chosen only pills. Rather than condom use, you have agreed that she should suffer more severe cramps (and likely more pain-killers)? I will admit that condom use is not a perfect substitute, but your wife is voluntarily suffering so that you can get around condom use?

Please note that I'm not trying to judge your pill vs. condoms decision. I just want you and I to agree or disagree about my statement. I don't really care about the final decision, I just want to understand the circumstances surrounding your decision.

Re:Not good.....

[danielsfca2]

Actually, we're not using pills. I mentioned before, the non-hormonal IUD. All the hormonal methods, such as the pill or the NuvaRing, are incompatible with her other medications (which I'll just say *are* very necessary).

We arrived at the decision together, after about six months. The wife liked condoms even less than I did. While it's true that the IUD increases the severity, she already had cramps before, and, she prefers the better sex and (most importantly) the security, that comes with using a device. Also, as far as the convenience, it's sort of like the difference between unlimited cell phone minutes and prepaid. Not only are your minutes finite, but you have to purchase more periodically, and always at the most inconvenient time. It feels better and less stressful knowing you don't have to worry about wasting anything or even running out at all.

Also, it costs about $600 to get one of those things put in, and we didn't know how her body would react to it until we tried it. It's actually paid for itself by now vs. condoms, but we'd still be throwing a lot of money away to take it out prematurely.

So in summary, we both chose the increased pain in order to get the benefits I mentioned.

Re:Not good.....

[ichimunki]

Good counterpoints.

Re:Not good.....

[gatesvp]

So in summary, we both chose the increased pain in order to get the benefits I mentioned. Wow, I can see that you had several difficult decisions, thank you for sharing your story.

Re:Not good.....

[GooberToo]

Great link. Thanks. But that's not the guy I was thinking of. This guy was somewhere in his 70s to 80s some five years ago or so. His story was much like Al's in that he didn't have a bed, etc.

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

All I was saying was that conservatives tend to avoid new information. Kind of the same way rocks tend to avoid moving.

You took exception to that, so I explained. You came back with an excellent justification of conservatism which had nothing to do with the original fact--that YES, I meant to say that Conservatives like to pick viewpoints they hear that justify their positions while liberals TEND to evaluate them simply due to the definition of liberal and conservative.

The funny thing is that your tactic--off topic but technically correct while completely avoiding the context, is an extremely common conservative argument methodology. Once more conservatives will read it and say "That's true, we win" while completely ignoring the argument that started it.

Re:Not good.....

[Gorshkov]

All I was saying was that conservatives tend to avoid new information. Kind of the same way rocks tend to avoid moving.

It might be more accurate to say that rocks tend to avoid moving until enough force is applied ... in other words, that they change their mind when the feel that there is enough evidence to WARRANT changing their mind. But as with the rock .. just because there is no "visible" movement, it doesn't mean that the information (or force) is discarded or ignored - it just means that there has been *enough* force. I am very open to new ideas - I have always been. But, being conservative, I don't go with the fad de jour, or change my mind simply because fashion dictates that I should, or because this new idea is "cool". I change my mind when there is enough evidence that I believe the change is warranted.

I don't see anything close- or narrow-minded about that.

You came back with an excellent justification of conservatism which had nothing to do with the original fact--that YES, I meant to say that Conservatives like to pick viewpoints they hear that justify their positions while liberals TEND to evaluate them simply due to the definition of liberal and conservative.

And what you missed is my one and only point. Just because conservatives don't change their mind at the drop of a hat does NOT mean, in any way, shape or form, that they are "picking viewpoints that justify their positions". It simply means that there is not enough to convince them.

What you just stated ignores the definition of both conservative AND liberal - the one that you, yourself supplied.

All other things being equal (which we all know is never the case), the conservative will TEND to stick with the already-established, traditional view.

And all other things being equal (which we still know is never the case), the liberl will TEND to go with the new idea.

There are liberal bigots, and there are conservative bigots. There are liberal close-minded, arrogant pricks who are utterly convinced that they are right and everybody else is wrong .... and there are conservative close-minded, arrogant pricks who are utterly convinced that they are right and everybody else is wrong.

The bottom line is that your generalization & categorization of both conservative AND liberal is inaccurate, incorrect and .... dare I say it? ..... close-minded and arrogant.

But then again, what can one say about an AC who, by definition, is a coward?

Re:Not good.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they're out there for heat reasons... well, cooling reasons.

But, sleep is where I'm a viking!

[ettlz]

But, sleep is where I'm a viking!

Eradicate the spam problem by eating it? In your dreams!

Refreshing

[grasshoppa]

"New Scientist is running an article on lifestyle drugs that claim to help you function on little or no sleep. I'm dubious, but the interviewee in the article claims they work well. 'Yves (not his real name), a 31- year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'"

It's refreshing to see evolution still at work.

A new market

[eviloverlordx]

They should try selling this to new parents. My wife would surely love to get her hands on some.

Re:A new market

[szo]

And by brestfeeding, pass it on to your baby. I hope you're just joking.

Re:A new market

[Eccles]

Not necessarily, she could give it to her husband. He can do everything except the actual feeding (and even that, if she's saved some or they're using formula at least some of the time.)

While it's something one should perhaps go through once, I certainly wouldn't want to relive the first few months of my children's lives, it was pretty torturous. I would seriously considered using something like this.

Re:A new market

[b0s0z0ku]

He can do everything except the actual feeding (and even that, if she's saved some or they're using formula at least some of the time.)

I thought it doesn't really work that way easily. That a baby sucks on a human nipple and a rubber nipple in a very different manner, and if s/he "knows" how to extract milk from one, s/he often can't extract milk from the other.

-b.

Re:A new market

[zxnos]

yeah, who wants a newborn awake all the time?

seriously though, odds are she isnt breasfeeding. why a more parents dont give their kids free, portable, no preparation required, extremely healthy food until at least the kiddo starts 'solid' food is beyond me.

to get back on point... ...a friend of mine works at a sleep lab and started taking this stuff all the time. he was always fairly intense and he seemed normal. i was surprised he wasnt concerned about possible side effects until i learned he played diablo II while he was supposed to be monitoring patients...

Re:A new market

[Eccles]

My two kids did both human and bottle; they can generally figure it out if they're hungry enough.

Re:A new market

[eviloverlordx]

seriously though, odds are she isnt breasfeeding. why a more parents dont give their kids free, portable, no preparation required, extremely healthy food until at least the kiddo starts 'solid' food is beyond me.

Nope, she's not. The reason why we're not breastfeeding is that our baby won't latch on. This is a very common occurance, and happens more often than you might think.

We've been pumping, but since my wife is going back to work, we've switched to formula.

Re:A new market

[Hankenstein]

I completely agree, I think a prescription for this should be included for the father and possibly for the mom if not breastfeeding. I tried unsuccessfully (and halfheartedly) to get some Modafinil or Provigil during the first 6 months of my second son. I think I would have enjoyed that period much more if I wasn't so cranky.

Re:A new market

[MightyYar]

Who breastfeeds anymore? That's disgusting.

Re:A new market

[szo]

Right. And what's your opinion about the method still widely used to make the babies, known as 'sex'?

Re:A new market

[MightyYar]

The kids are still doing that? How quaint.

Re:A new market

[Watson Ladd]

Just synthesize it.

Re:A new market

[Anonymous Coward]

"he" is the pronoun used in English for male and unknown people. "s/he" is not a word.

The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[Qzukk]

But, sleep is where I'm a viking!

Don't worry, Taco! After 100 hours or so awake, you'll BE a viking, raping and pillaging and showing those pink elephants who's boss!

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[corychristison]

This reminds me of the time I tried to stay awake for as long as I could. I hit 93 hours or so. Note that this incident did not involve any drugs. Legal or otherwise.

I was still fairly young then, at the age of 14 or so. I was out with friends on the final night of my experiment and I started to see things and totally freaked out. One of the hallucinations was indeed a miniature pink elephant. As well I thought a tree was a very large spider. I have a terrible fear of spiders. After my friends managed to get me into the house and calmed me down, I suddenly got up and went out into the back yard to jump on the trampoline. It was -10 degree's Celsius or so and I was just wearing Jeans and a T-Shirt. I couldn't tell the difference. All I remember is having them waking me up and having to be rushed to the hospital. I was jumping on the trampoline and slipped. I flew off and cracked my head on a mound of ice. I'm just glad one of the springs didn't break or on the trampoline and hit me in the ass or something. It was fairly cold.

I stayed in the hospital for the night as the thought I may have had a concussion. I still don't remember any of that week. What I told you now is what my friends have told me. I also heard that earlier on in my experiment [first 24 hours I suppose] I had exclaimed to my friends that my toothpaste had started talking to me the next day at school.

Now I enjoy my sleep.

Pills? No thanks. I prefer the natural method of recovering from a hard days work writing code. :-)

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[EvanED]

One of my friends was a dancer for Penn State's Dance Marathon. Basically a couple hundred (? just a guess) people stay up and "dance" (that's a fancy word for "sway back and forth because you're freaking tired") for 48 hours straight at the end of a fundraising drive for the four diamonds fund. She said that sometime during the last 12 hours or so she swears she had a conversation with one of my other friends who had stopped by, but he swears that he was nowhere near there then.

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[multimed]

So if you had a concussion, did they force you to stay awake for hours to make sure you didn't drop into a coma or something? I'm not even sure if they still do that - prohibit sleep when you have a concussion or if it's just an old wives's tale, but given your situation at the time, it might have been tough to decide which was worse.

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[Tired_Blood]

I was 18 for my marathon of 104 hours. I wrote about it here as AC. I strongly advise against any drug assistance for this type of activity.

I suddenly got up and went out into the back yard to jump on the trampoline.

In my experience, I was acutely aware of my slowed physical state (reaction times were slower and very low motivation for activity). As such, I became very cautious with my movements, and would have never thought to do something like that (walking up stairs was my most strenuous activity during that period). Part of the reason was to conserve energy, but that was only a conscious decision at the start whereas later on it simply became routine.

It was -10 degree's Celsius or so and I was just wearing Jeans and a T-Shirt. I couldn't tell the difference.

I do remember losing some sense of touch. Nothing that extreme, though.

I was out with friends on the final night of my experiment and I started to see things and totally freaked out. One of the hallucinations was indeed a miniature pink elephant. As well I thought a tree was a very large spider. ... I also heard that earlier on in my experiment [first 24 hours I suppose] I had exclaimed to my friends that my toothpaste had started talking to me the next day at school.

The hallucinations were very minor for me (I didn't expect or want them). YMMV, I guess. Sleeping through an entire day after that marathon was disorienting as well. In all, it was a weird week for me.

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[oc255]

Man, you guys make me look like a lightweight. I was in college and had a week of no class (was helping with events). This was my chance to try no sleep before getting into an unending 9-5 career schedule (hey, I was right).

63 hours straight, very little coffee, nothing else. First day was rough. After that it was just weird. Skin felt dead. I was going to keep going but then I literally saw gray spots (maybe 10 or so random overlay type). Afraid of long-term effects, I went to bed, slept 24 hours and then some powernaps to sync up with the Sun.

As far as REM being active, I'm pretty good at lucid dreaming and (not related) have woken up in full REM on accident (extremely memorable and painful). A variety of colors, sharp white-red and brown noise, scalp was tingling, eyes were tense, body paralyzed and when I was typing the experience as fast as I could, random sentences ended up in the document as the experience faded that I only later read as "who typed that?". I'd agree with the posts that say REM is active, it's scary how much we miss every night.

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well best I ever went with no help of drugs(well other than the soft drinks) was right around 11days. I never had any major problems. Other than getting chills and then heat waves starting around the 6th day. I also did my little sleep study when I was 14. The only other side effect was the creeper crawling skin at about day 8(I was able to help negate the effect of this by doing thought experiments). That wasn't really a big deal through. Personally I had fun. Was able to do alot of stuff in a short period of time. I did sleep for about a day ad a half after this incedent though. I will warn you though I do have terrible manic swings that I have to take sleeping aids to help keep in control or I will easily stay awake for 3-4 days at a time with no want for sleep. When I awake my body hates to sleep but when I'm asleep my body hates to wake up. Kinda of a wierd thing.

Re:The bugs! They are crawling up my legs!

[corychristison]

They had to wake me every now and then to ensure I was till alive. Although, the sleep I got between wakings felt sooo long.

This is news? Did they sleep through the 1980s?

[JonTurner]

This just in: New Scientist discovers cocaine. Story at 11.

Re:This is news? Did they sleep through the 1980s?

[Captain Splendid]

Cocaine is a hell of a drug!

Re:This is news? Did they sleep through the 1980s?

[takotech]

I'm Rick James bitch.

Re:This is news? Did they sleep through the 1980s?

[schlouse]

Would you like some pancakes?

Great, now the terrorist know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack Bauer's big secret is out. What chance does he stand next season when the terrorists can go 24 hours without sleeping as easily as he can?

The Only Profession Requiring No Sleep

[eldavojohn]

Doctor: Now, what seems to be the problem?
Patient: I got it bad, doc, I barely get any sleep ... I need some modafinil--or my life will fall apart!
Doctor: Now hold on there, I don't go around giving prescriptions of that to just anyone! You're young, you look like you're in good shape, why don't you get any sleep?
Patient: Well, it's just that ... I'm a ... software developer.
Doctor: My GOD! Why didn't you say anything? *yells out the door* Nurse! I'm going to need a lifetime's supply of modafinil--stat!
Patient: Oh thank you, doc, thank you so much!
Doctor: Everything's going to be alright, plus it seems your company's health care is willing to provide 100% of the funding for this with no deductable, can't say I've seen that before. Now you say that you're married as well? Then I'm going to recommend you take two of these every day with fifth of bourbon ...

Re:The Only Profession Requiring No Sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

My health plan does cover Provigil, but I haven't been able to convince them about the bourbon!

Re:The Only Profession Requiring No Sleep

[mikearthur]

Come on. Software Developer? Married? At least make your jokes realistic!

Yikes.

[Rob T Firefly]

Modafinil is just the first of a wave of new lifestyle drugs that promise to do for sleep what the contraceptive pill did for sex

So from now on we'll have to sleep in rubber sleeping bags if we don't want it to kill us?

Re:Yikes.

[Valdrax]

Wow, I wish I had mod points, because you, sir, don't have enough right now.

Old news

[WinkyN]

This story appeared in the New Scientist in mid-February 2006.

Re:Old news

[Capt James McCarthy]

"This story appeared in the New Scientist in mid-February 2006." That's because the editors thought they were hummingbirds for the last 9 months.

Re:Old news

[Mprx]

Modafinil feels much better than amphetamines if you're just trying to reduce sleep. There's no real euphoria, but also none of the unpleasant side effects of amphetamine (or even caffeine). It's a very "smooth" feeling stimulant, unlike any other type of stimulant. It's not a great recreational drug, but as a drug to enhance your working ability there is nothing better.

Re:Old news

[b0s0z0ku]

but also none of the unpleasant side effects of amphetamine (or even caffeine)

Caffeine? Unpleasant?

-b.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Caffeine? Unpleasant?

Yeah man. We ought to kick their ass for suggesting that caffeine is unpleasant... or makes us unpleasant.

Re:Old news

[dj_krztoff]

HAHAHA, mod this up!!

Re:Old news

[Woldry]

Yes, caffeine unpleasant. I get NASTY migraines if I have so much as a cup of coffee -- not while the caffeine is in my system, but as it begins to wear off. I also get heart palpitations and wild blood-sugar fluctuations while the caffeine is still kicking. Took me years of Pepsi addiction to figure out what the hell was going on. Cut out the caffeine altogether and all those bad things went away. I've managed to figure out over the years since that a single cup of tea is usually okay, if taken with a meal (slowing the caffeine absorption) but anything stronger is pretty much off limits for me. (Oddly, chocolate seems not to have the same effect at all if taken in moderation; though the main stimulant in chocolate is theobromine, not caffeine.)

Re:Old news

[b0s0z0ku]

I get NASTY migraines if I have so much as a cup of coffee

Heh, I'm the opposite way. A cup of coffee usually gets rid of the headache when I wake up with a migraine. Maybe I have low blood pressure or something.

-b.

Re:Old news

[NineNine]

I used to be physically addicted to caffeine. When I went cold turkey, I was sick as a dog for 2 days. I remember, because I was in college, and I had to miss two days of class because my head was splitting, and I was throwing up. Now granted, at that point I was drinking roughly 10-12 cans of Coke a day, but still, caffeine is NOT harmless.

Re:Old news

[Abcd1234]

Yeah, it is harmless... when you aren't overdosing on the shit. Seriously, 10-12 cans a *DAY*? If I was your pancreas, I would have taken you out and shot you.

Re:Old news

[Abcd1234]

Actually, that's not that unusual. Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, and so it can work to cure headaches in some people (particularly in the case of tension headaches). Heck, painkillers such as ibuprofen are often combined with caffeine, as the two together work even better.

Re:Old news

[SuperQ]

Don't forget all the sugar in cola/mt. dew style drinks.. 10-12 cans of coke a day is close to 400-450 grams of sugar.. or about a pound.. that's an insane amount of sugar.

Re:Old news

[Shads]

That's weird, I have -0- effects from caffeine so far as I can tell. It doesn't keep me awake, it doesn't make me alert, and it doesn't give me the shakes. I drank four pots of coffee one time and 30m later promptly fell asleep for 3 hours... in this case the coffee served as an alarm clock as my bladder was nearly rupturing when I woke up. In high school i took almost 1/3rds a bottle of no doz (~20 200mg pills), i felt sick to my stomach, and a bit dizzy, but other than that I didn't get twitches or anything. I went to sleep 4-5 hours later and slept 10 hours... felt fine when I woke up.

the flip side

[cucucu]

Sleep eradicates the need for this drug.

pills for everything

[qwijibo]

It's reassuring to see that pharmaceutical companies can make a pill to solve every problem, even ones that weren't a real problem before they came up with a pill.

Re:pills for everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Modafinal or provigil was created long before this study on using it for avoiding sleep. It is a drug used to treat narcolepsi. Some people wouldn't be able to work without it since they would fall asleep walking down the hallway. I took the drug once to help with the sleepy side effects of antidepressants. Provigil felt like taking speed and I was always hyperactive. I wouldn't recommend taking it.

Re:pills for everything

[thepotoo]

Yeah, really.

Now, we'll have more people going out partying late at night, more cars on the roads, more people awake at night using electricity...

Even if this doesn't have any long-term side effects on people (which I bet it does), it'll have a massive impact on energy usage and consumption.
I, for one, hope that this doesn't get adopted until we have 100% clean energy (in other words, never).

Re:pills for everything

[PacketShaper]

The United States is currently the only country in the world that allows drug companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to the consumer. Anyone else think we are headed for trouble?

Re:pills for everything

[rbochan]

You mean... they've come up with a cure for this Restless Leg Syndrome I've had for 3 years???
Hurray!

Re:pills for everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Sleep eats half your life, half the lives of everyone who's ever lived...and you don't consider that a problem? If there was a magical cure for sleep, it would do more good than a cure for AIDS and cancer combined, because relative to sleep those problems affect almost no one.

Re:pills for everything

[qwijibo]

Have you seen how most people spend their lives? Most people aren't research scientists, and I suspect the more intellectual people will be more reluctant to adopt this drug for regular use. Exactly what good would be done by giving people a cure to sleep? Everyone could watch another 6 hours of television every day? What a boon for society that would be!

Also, I would expect exempt full time employees to get screwed by having more free time. Offerring a salary based on 40 hours and expecting 60 is pretty common. The reason most companies don't push to 80-100 is that people become less productive when they're worked to the point of exhaustion. If this drug gets rid of that, there's an incentive for the employee to take it (because they have to if they want to meet expectations and be successful) and the company gets to push harder without losing productivity. If companies can get more work out of fewer people, they will.

Re:pills for everything

[owlnation]

And eventually they will develop a pill to counteract the effects of the pill you've already been taking too, to complete the circle and sell to you twice.

It's like shampoo - convince people they need conditioner as well as shampoo, then mock them for taking two bottles into the shower. Ah, marketers... where would we be without them... living in blissful idyll probably.

Re:pills for everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Not to mention, for those of us that don't like the thought of destroying our bodies to make someone else rich, can you imagine this conversation a few years down the road?

Boss: "Bill, I'm gonna need you to pull straight through till Friday on this project."

Bill: "Sir, that's 72 hours awake straight."

Boss: "Well Jim can do it right Jim?"

Jim: "That's right sir!"

Boss:"So Bill, pop this pill and hop to work."

Jim: "But sir, the unknown side effects--"

Boss: "--won't matter if you don't get to eat because you don't have a job. Hop to it, have that report on my desk Friday."

Anyone that thinks it won't happen if the pharmaceuticals want it is fooling themselves.

Re:pills for everything

[Civil_Disobedient]

a pill to solve every problem, even ones that weren't a real problem before they came up with a pill

Spoken like someone who doesn't suffer from narcolepsy. Sure, there are probably going to be people who abuse this. Just like with any drug. But to dismiss this out-of-hand because you don't personally have to deal with any of the problems it's designed to address is pure ignorant selfishness.

Re:pills for everything

[qwijibo]

The article makes it sound like the legitimate purposes are the wink-wink-justification, while it's well known that it's being used much more frequently for other purposes.

Cephalon insists that the drug is for treating "medical" sleepiness caused by diseases such as narcolepsy and sleep apnoea.

Even so, it's clear that modafinil is becoming a lifestyle drug for people like Yves who want off-the-peg wakefulness. "At first I got it from a friend, and then I got diagnosed as a narcoleptic online," says Yves.

While I may have been overly dismissive of the legitimate aspects of this drug, the article reads like a PR plant for a pharmaceutical company trying to market this new wonder drug to the public.

Re:pills for everything

[lixee]

Indeed! http://mondediplo.com/2006/05/16bigpharma

Re:pills for everything

[scottv67]

You mean... they've come up with a cure for this Restless Leg Syndrome I've had for 3 years???

Provigil is not a cure for RLS. It helps manage the negative effects of having RLS. Even if you aren't getting good sleep at night (because of the RLS), you can feel a little more alert the next day by leaning on the Provigil. But even Provigil wears off after four to six hours. And then you crash.

I take Provigil every day to help deal with RLS.

-Scott

Augustus Cole

[eldavojohn]

Plus there's that "Sleepless" episode of the X-Files from Season Two where soldiers were given medication and treatment during Vietnam so that they'd never sleep ... I won't give away any spoilers as it's quite the enjoyable episode.

Re:Augustus Cole

[BWJones]

You might be surprised at how art imitates *real life* with respect to sleep projects that have acquired a black status within certain government agencies in the not too distant past. I'm not kidding...

Re:Augustus Cole

[Martin Blank]

This kind of thing does happen occasionally. There's a Vietnamese man who allegedly hasn't slept since 1973, and I've heard stories from my mother (who used to work in a hospital) of the occasional stroke patient who would remain awake for days at a time before getting a couple of hours of sleep, and then doing it again.

Re:Augustus Cole

[scottv67]

where soldiers were given medication and treatment during Vietnam so that they'd never sleep

I take the drug mentioned in the story (brand name is Provigil) to treat Restless Leg Syndrome. It helps me feel more alert during the day for the times when my RLS is keeping me from getting good sleep at night. When I first started taking Provigil, I did a little searching with Google and found a reference that said the military is testing Provigil on pilots who have to stay away for days at a time during very long flights. So yes, the military is doing something very similar to that episode of the X-Files.

-Scott <== Suffers from RLS

OMG 10-20 years!!! Thats so close...

[antirelic]

"In 10 to 20 years we'll be able to pharmacologically turn sleep off." Wow! Right around that time I should be able to stay awake behind the wheel of my flying car powered by a comercially available fusion generator! In 10-20 years, everything will be great!

Re:OMG 10-20 years!!! Thats so close...

[badran]

& dont forget play Duke Nukem... that New edition you guys know what I am talking about :P....

Re:OMG 10-20 years!!! Thats so close...

[Fengpost]

Perfect, I will be up all night playing Duke Nukem Forever!

I don't understand...

[stevobi]

The need for what?

Little to no sleep?

[Enoxice]

I'd go insane if I didn't sleep much/at all. I love relaxing and drifting off for 6-10 hours every day.

Either way, I can't imagine this is too healthy for humans in the long run.

More work, less life

[Anonymous Coward]

When do his/her cells get to repair themselves? And a heartrate at a constant 72bpm all day, is that healthy, in the long view?

Life's not a sprint to the finish (or should not be) It's to be an enjoyable treck with rest and recreation.

what a tool (of the "man")

It's called Meth, and it'll turn you into a neut

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding.

Hmmm... Not Good

[eno2001]

If it's artificially interfering with a normal function of life and it's not involved in preventing a life threatening disease, it's just a bad idea. Myself, I only need four to six hours a night and I can function well. I actually natrually wake up after six hours even without an alarm clock. I've always been that way. If I really need to puch myself I can get by with two hours sleep. This is perfectly natural. Back in the 90s I read a book on sleep and it stated that most humans need the typical eight hours of sleep. It also revealed that in a few sleep studies where the subjects are kept from knowing the real time or seeing any cues (daylight), that they tended to sleep more on the order of 10 hours a night with their sleep cycle drifting an hour later each day (ie. they would go to sleep an hour later each day without realizing it). But, they did concede that every human is different and there indeed people who don't need much sleep and others who actualy need a lot more sleep than is culturally possible (13-15 hours a day) to be at their best. Sadly, humans are WAY too flexible in their traits which means that there is no "one size fits all" approach. In the case of this drug however, I'd say that it will be revealed eventually just how detrimental it's effects are while simultaneously being denied by the pharmaceutical companies that produce it.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[Cerium]

I doubt this will be denied. Perhaps considering it a replacement for sleep is taking it a bit too far, but I can see this easily being a replacement for existing products such as no-doze (Which, I imagine truckers consider a godsend).

Also, I envy your ability to function on six hours of sleep. I'm one of those poor saps who cant get out of bed without a minimum of ten hours. I guess software development probably wasn't the best career choice...

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[ConceptJunkie]

If it's artificially interfering with a normal function of life and it's not involved in preventing a life threatening disease, it's just a bad idea.

Funny, no one seems to feel that way when the normal function is fertility.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[eno2001]

Keep you v14rga ads off of Slashdot pleeze. Actually, you make a valid point. Fertility is in a different arena though. Not to mention that with a few exceptions, you can do a lot more regarding fertility with basic but difficult lifestyle changes. The drugs are simply the easy way out. I'm not saying that they're bad, but I don't put them in the same category as what's being discussed here.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[regular_gonzalez]

If it's artificially interfering with a normal function of life and it's not involved in preventing a life threatening disease, it's just a bad idea.

I think that's a too broad standard. Wisdom teeth are a "normal" part of human development and are not life threatening, but virtually everyone gets theirs removed. And I'm sure the slashdot group think would not care to apply your standard to the question of abortion.

I am concerned about long term effects of drugs such as modafinil, but I can't help but wish it was available OTC. Sleep is the thief that steals away my life; we lose a quarter to a third of our lifespan irrevocably, something I find truly frustrating.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[Anonymous Coward]

>
> Which, I imagine truckers consider a godsend
>

IANAT, but...

s/truckers/truck companies/

Though I understand some people really love to drive all day, the vast majority of them are just doing it because they "can't do anything else", and they need money. and be sure this is not an happy life. You don't see your family often, you gain weight because you're sitting all day, you're always drinking alcool to not be too bored, and eating when you can. You are often driving the same roads all year, you're breathing nothing but exhaust gas. The only animations are radio, CBs, people talking at bars, TV and newspapers at bars, the other people in their cars, the landscape through the glass windshield...

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's artificially interfering with a normal function of life and it's not involved in preventing a life threatening disease, it's just a bad idea.

The pope agrees with you: the pill is a bad idea!

Me, I need my espresso and my beer.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[eno2001]

Good points again. I'm definitely pro-contraception, and well... wisdom teeth are a pretty basic although traumatic procedure. (I bled for days after mine and the numbness and tingling in my tongue didn't go away for about five years) My original statement probably needs a little ammendment. My main point being that I don't buy into using drugs to work around the inconveniences of being alive. I even avoid medication when people try to put me on it. (It shows doesn't it?) ;P

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[fimbulvetr]

Truck drivers, at least in the USA, are required to have breaks inbetween long shifts and lack of documentation or misleading documentation can result in severe penalties. Fortunately, this is a good thing. Otherwise, crap like this:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Central/05/24/bridge.co llapse/index.html

happens and people suffer. I was about 15 seconds behind that accident in May of 2003 and now I always keep a reasonable distance behind trucks because of my timidness.

Of course, some of my timidness also stems from an aquaintance being killed in highschool by a poorly secured freight strap coming undone from a flatbed truck that was heading the opposite direction of the my friend on a 2 lane highway. The strap flew out sideways into the car, at, well, a very high speed. Needless to say, there was little time to react and the funeral was closed casket.

The last thing you want is truck driver not being 100% alert.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[matfud]

wisdom teeth are often very dangerous. Most people who have them removed have it done for medical reasons (in the UK anyway). Impacted teeth cause infections and without antibiotics these can easily kill you. I had mine removed after the third infection within a year (at about 21).

For anybody needing thier wisdoms removed I would have to recomend having done under local anesthetic. Its an unpleseant experiance but you come out of it with no bruseing, no dislocated jaw, no black eyes and can go to the pub the same day.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[blincoln]

My main point being that I don't buy into using drugs to work around the inconveniences of being alive. I even avoid medication when people try to put me on it.

I can understand your point of view, but that doesn't mean I should necessarily want to live my life that way. I've always believed that performance-enhancing drugs of any kind are just another tool in the box that we've built ever since our ancestors started making stone knives and using fire.

Most of the ones now have some sort of tradeoff - e.g. steroids and stimulants. But I don't think that means they shouldn't be available, just that they should be used by people who understand that they're not getting the benefits without some significant side-effects.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[scottv67]

If it's artificially interfering with a normal function of life and it's not involved in preventing a life threatening disease, it's just a bad idea.

What if I didn't take my Provigil in the afternoon (I take it to deal with RLS), I fell asleep behind the wheel while on the freeway, crossed the median and ran into your mom's vehicle head-on (ending her life)? Would you consider that a "life threatening" disease?

Just asking.

-Scott

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[eno2001]

First... what's RLS? Second, if you've got a disease that would cause you to fall asleep while driving, then by all means it's life threatening even if you only kill yourself. Where I think it's abuse is when someone's employer says, "here's nine days worth of work, I want it done in 36 hours. Straight hours. In other words you don't sleep until your done. You'll be supplied with the appropriate medication to cope". That's EXACTLY where we're headed based on this article.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[scottv67]

First... what's RLS?

Google is your friend:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rls&btnG=Goog le+Search
http://www.rls.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?&pid=178 &srcid=-2

In other words you don't sleep until your done. You'll be supplied with the appropriate medication to cope". That's EXACTLY where we're headed based on this article.

Trust me, Provigil is so g-damn expensive that there is NO WAY your employer will pay for it unless it's medically necessary. I'm surprised my insurance covers Provigil.
Secondly, it would not keep you awake and coherent for 36 hours. You might be able to stay awake for 36 hours but you would not be as lucid as your employer desired. It is not a Get Out of Jail Free card. It only delays the inevitable (good, deep sleep). Can I stay awake for 36 hours? Maybe. Do you want me working on your network infrastructure after I've stayed awake that long with the help of drugs? Definitely not.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[mrchaotica]

It also revealed that in a few sleep studies where the subjects are kept from knowing the real time or seeing any cues (daylight), that they tended to sleep more on the order of 10 hours a night with their sleep cycle drifting an hour later each day (ie. they would go to sleep an hour later each day without realizing it).

Hey, I do exactly that even with time cues! Man, it'd be great if the day were 25 hours long, or if I had a flexible enough schedule to switch to a six day week.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[eno2001]

You underestimate the evilness of most businesses when it comes to having a competitive edge. If they stand to gain millions in exchange for amping up their workers on an expensive medication, they will do it. That's all I'm saying. We've seen it time and time again in other areas when business wants to win. They'll stop at nothing. Even killing innocent people. So what's the big deal about spending a fraction of huge possible wealth on the unethical use abuse of prescription meds?

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[Cervantes]

I do the "slipping an hour" thing quite regularly, it's a struggle to avoid it. I don't suppose you recall the title or author of the book you read, or any of the studies? I've always been somewhat interested in finding out more about the human tenancy to a 25 hour day (and maybe a way to avoid it!). The only non-insane theory I've heard is that it has something to do with one of the ELE asteroids hitting the earth and slowing the rotation, but then again, comparing the mass of the planet and the mass of an asteroid that wouldn't break it to bits... it seems unlikely. It's hard (but interesting) to imagine what sort of spacial phenomena could pass by, close enough to slow rotation, but far enough away not to doom us all.

Re:Hmmm... Not Good

[eno2001]

I think the Book I read is Sleep Thieves by Stanley Coren. I read it back in the 90s. I was thinking closer to the early 90s than 1996, but 1996 actually seems about right. Mainly because I remember not having started to work in IT yet when I read the book and 1997 is when I started.

Gadget

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Go Go Gadget Go Pill!

Obligatory Shakespeare Reference

[duh P3rf3ss3r]

"To die; to sleep; to sleep perchance to dream! Aye, there's the rub. For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil?"

Re:Obligatory Shakespeare Reference

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

...what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil?"

Dreams of Daring Duels in Denmark! (With Vikings)

Re:Obligatory Shakespeare Reference

[WillyMF1]

Please help me out here. What was the relevance of that quote to this discussion?

Re:Obligatory Shakespeare Reference

[ajm]

To rephrase your sig

Give a man a light and he's warm for a minue; set a man alight and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Re:Obligatory Shakespeare Reference

[digitalsushi]

that quote refers to what happens to us after we kill ourselves.

No thanks

[lewp]

I gotta say, I really fucking like to sleep. Disregarding the fact that it's required to live (because I guess it's not going to be anymore, soon enough), I just enjoy actually falling asleep and dreaming.

The fact that the option will be there to not sleep is nice and all, and for some folks this is probably going to be a godsend (long-haul truckers and pilots, for example), but I think I'd off myself if I lived in a world where getting at least some sleep every day just wasn't an option.

Re:No thanks

[icebrain]

I'd really like to get my hands on this in the next week or two; trying to finish projects and study for finals would be a lot easier without that pesky sleep thing. These companies could make a killing at Georgia Tech...

Re:No thanks

[lewp]

You could do what I did at Georgia Tech... sleep through your finals :P

Re:No thanks

[Morphine007]

lol, how'd that work out for ya?

Re:No thanks

[HansWurst]

I gotta say, I really like fucking till I sleep!

Re:No thanks

[Shads]

He got A's, he's on the [insert sport here] team.

Oh swell

[Mark of THE CITY]

Now your dreams will really miss you.

They already have a drug for this.

[daskrabs]

It's called cocaine.

Die Another Day?

[TCK314]

Lets just hope our good friend doesn't have any world domination ambitions, eh?

Painkillers?

[setirw]

The concept behind this drug seems akin to that behind painkillers: Eliminate the symptoms, not the problem. Sure, with a sufficient dose of painkillers, I could run while my foot is broken without feeling any ill effects, but that doesn't nullify the damage that would be caused by doing this.

Re:Painkillers?

[silver4]

Eliminating the symptoms while not curing the disease seems like the holy grail of drug companies.
After all, if you a drug solves your problem, you don't need to buy it again.
But, if a drug only temporarily removes the symptoms, you have to keep buying the drug, and the drug company makes major $$$.

Re:Painkillers?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's the problem. Dealing with the symptoms do not always deal with the problems. Another is that taking a pill is sometimes just a shortcut to prevent you from having to do the hard thing. Such as diet pills. Those things fail miserably, people are more than generally heavier two years after they start taking diet pills. I for one do not want to deal with the repercussions of taking a no-sleep pill as a simple shortcut, I don't want to have a new disorder named after me because I was stupid enough to take a pill like this.

Re:Painkillers?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Eliminate the symptoms, not the problem.

Sounds great to me. It's only a problem as long as it has symptoms. If the symptoms go away, there is no problem.

Re:Painkillers?

[moonbender]

It's a problem if the symptoms only go away while you are taking the drug. I use cold sprays, but I try not to get addicted to them.

Re:Painkillers?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

It's a problem if the symptoms only go away while you are taking the drug

Only if the drug produces symptoms of its own, or is expensive.

Ultimately what we care about is symptoms. That's what matters. If you're a doctor, the best way to fix many symptoms is to figure out what the underlying problem is and fix that. But as an 'end user' all I want is the symptoms to go away. If I find a bug in some software I've bought and report it, I don't want to hear the company saying "it doesn't work because there was a reference count leak and the object representing the File menu was destroyed twice'. I don't care what the underlying problem is. Just deliver me software that works whether you fix it by fixing the leak or by hacking the destructor so that it refuses to run twice.

Re:Painkillers?

[moonbender]

You're not hearing what I'm saying. I agree with you, and any drug fixing symptoms is good. It's most useful though if a short therapy fixes the symptoms for good, it's less useful if you have to keep taking it to keep them away.

but you won't need to stay awake, then

[artifex2004]

Right around that time I should be able to stay awake behind the wheel of my flying car powered by a comercially available fusion generator!

But the car's going to have autopilot and land automatically. So why do you want to stay awake?

Re:but you won't need to stay awake, then

[geekoid]

to play the in car games...duh.

Re:but you won't need to stay awake, then

[Johnny00]

Scary thought: UACV - unmanned aerial commerical vehicle Effective cost cutting at United Airlines ...

Re:but you won't need to stay awake, then

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, to watch the in-flight movies, of course.

Better name:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ring of Sustenance.

(Faint conjuration; CL 5th; Forge Ring, create food and water; Price 2,500 gp.)

I think Taco already answered this..

[ihatewinXP]

Read the story tag line again -

From the "We alreadty discovered meth dept."

I dont want to advocate drug use.... but it appears Taco and I thought the same thing when we read the headline ;)

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[the dark hero]

i'll have to agree. the first thing that popped in my head was, "great, he invented crack cocaine."

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[Mysticalfruit]

I'm suspecting that just like Meth, this shit will cook your brain.

The tragedy is that we've gotten to this place. That people are so buried in work and are demanded to do so much in such unrealistic time frames that they feel compelled to cut sleep out of their lives.

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[Anonymous Coward]

it appears Taco and I thought the same thing

I'm not sure I'd want to admit to that!

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[nschubach]

I blame women! Ok, so maybe some of them. Joking aside, most women I meet base their opinion of a man on his social status or his job title. If he has an upstanding title, he must be driven to succeed and some other nonsense. It apparently shows confidence, though I'd argue that it shows the opposite. You can be just as confident in yourself if you didn't bust balls every day to try to put yourself in the coffin at an early age.

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[drinkypoo]

I blame women! Ok, so maybe some of them. Joking aside, most women I meet base their opinion of a man on his social status or his job title.

Both men and women are responsible for a great deal of self-destructive behavior. For example women who insist that taking out the trash is the man's chore. Great, assign me a gender role, then wonder why it happens to you every day in society. Not that it's any different from men still generally expecting women to be the cooks and cleaners. Of course that's going to end one way or another with generations X and Y because girls in these generations are less likely to know how to cook than any former ones, and the men more likely. Out of the various women I've known intimately, I'm a better cook than 2/3 of them and I'm frankly not all that talented.

I'm 29 years old and they're scattered all around my age, from seven years my junior to thirteen years my senior. In general, anyone younger than I am couldn't cook worth a damn (with one exception.) The older the women are in comparison to me, the more likely they are to cook well, or at least competently.

Now I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I'm not the only one. There is a preponderance of evidence that this is true.

But anyway, we're in for some cultural shake-ups. Or a whole lot more consumption of frozen pizzas and TV dinners.

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[nschubach]

I know this is going off topic here, but I've seen what your talking about. Places I've worked over the years have shown me that men generally make better waiters, cooks, and bankers. Most of the time, they don't get tipped as much, but that's another issue. I don't know if it's a gender role per se, but I think it has to do with the fact that most guys I know (except those that are gay [again, another issue]) seem to be focused on the job at hand instead of something off in the distance or their personal appearance. Of course, your construction worker types will all stop to stare at someone walking by, but they go right back to the job at hand and get it done. Society pins us to strange rules sometimes.

Re:I think Taco already answered this..

[bladesjester]

I can agree with the cooking thing. Lately, I've been teaching my girlfriend how to cook.

It can be downright hilarious at times. The fact that she doesn't want to try anything like that by herself is, in my opinion, even funnier. She doesn't experiment, but rather makes the same few things over and over again.

She tends to look forward to the weekends that I spend with her because my general line is "pick a region" as far as what we'll be cooking that weekend. I think the most recent thing that she learned is that hot sauce (and hot peppers) are not just used to burn your mouth, but can also improve flavor if used in smaller quantities. Before then, she swore that she didn't really like hot peppers.

I cooked pretty well before college - primarily standard American stuff, Chinese, and Italian because of the people I grew up around. In college, I picked up other cooking styles from international friends. We used to have one night a week where the group of us (usually 5 - 7 of us from, among other locations, China, Japan, Egypt, and Jamacia) got together, cooked, hung out, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

Blah...

[__aaclcg7560]

This was covered by the X-Files. A secret government lab created a drug that eliminated the need for sleep and their test subjects were soldiers in the Vietnam War. Side effects? Not being able to sleep for years on end, being able to project the fear of God into people, and being more psychotic than your typical Viet Nam vet. I'll pass...

Re:Blah...

[geekoid]

"...being able to project the fear of God into people ..."
I don't know, that's pretty hard to pass up.

Re:Blah...

[NoseyNick]

Oh, it was covered by the X-Files??? Must be true then :-)

Re:Blah...

[__aaclcg7560]

Better yet, you read it on Slashdot. Now it's double true! :P

Next time saving pill coming on the market

[Hoi Polloi]

Schering-Plough has just annouced the first prescription drug on the market to eliminate the need to go to the can. The drug, "Excretefree", will allow people to work and play continuously without the need for potty breaks. The drug causes the anus and urethra to close tightly preventing waste products from leaving the body. There is no chance of accidental or voluntary release for 24 hrs.

Side affects include internal rupture, massive swelling of the abdomen, oral (reversed) flatulence, abdominal pain, and epic post-medication trips to the bathroom.

Re:Next time saving pill coming on the market

[Morphine007]

sweet jesus, I'll finally be able to run MC, BWL and AQ40 back to back!!11oneone

Re:Next time saving pill coming on the market

[tomjen]

Actually, we joked about making the ultimate geek chair - having a computer monitor your blod for suger, vitamin and various other drugs and then use it to control a drip like they use in hospitals. That way you would be able to have extented computer hacking times.

Re:Next time saving pill coming on the market

[Shads]

add modanafil to the drip and imagine the things you could accomplish.

Fuck that

[hsmith]

I want my sleep damn it

Old news

[NineNine]

There have been drugs around to do this for hundreds of years, at least. It's called speed.

Ironic....

[Rooked_One]

Last night I slept for 13 hours - the night before I only slept 4 and had a very busy day. Yes, i'm still in a daze as i'm just waking up, but I know i'll feel great today. I wonder if mister viking can say the same.

What the hey? Psychosis?

[RedOregon]

I seem to remember something about how sleep deprivation can and does cause extreme psychosis after a while. Outside of a brief mention, the article doesn't really address that. Might be interesting to see what happens in six months or so to some of these guys.

I also foggily remember an article (National Geographic?) many years ago about a study where they put a guy deep underground in a cave with *no* clocks of any kind... if I remember right he eventually equilibrialized (is that a word?) at something outrageous like 27 hours of wakefulness with like 13 hours of sleep in between? Anyone remember that?

The real danger...

[dropshot]

is if this works exactly as described. How long will it take until employers (or anyone who demands time in our lives) expects us to be available for 18 or 20 hour days? How disruptive would this be to society? If expectations change, anyone who doesn't want to disrupt their life to the extent that might be demanded will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Re:The real danger...

[techpawn]

They already do... Who do you think has contributed to most of Blackberry success?

Re:The real danger...

[Sloppy]

I hate to break it to you, but you're already at a competitive disadvantage with anyone who accepts less out of life, whether it's a third-world worker or a robot. Funny how you turned a technological advantage into a disadvantage.

Technology isn't really changing the fact that other people want pieces of your life for themselves. The thing to remember is that it is yours to give or deny or exchange for whatever you think is a fair value. If you live for yourself, then whenever they ask for too much, you can always Just Say No.

How disruptive will it be to society? Well, if we're all just a bunch of slaves that have to do whatever is expected of us, then I can't say it really disrupts society at all -- we had nothing to lose and there was no society to be disrupted.

Re:The real danger...

[dropshot]

I'm not trying to transform an advantage into a disadvantage, but point out that it has aspects of both which we would be foolish to ignore. Gaining a new technological capability can have positive effects, but its is something that should be done with an eye to minimizing the hazards. There can be second and third order effects when the new change interacts with existing technologies and social structures. This is the example I had in mind when I wrote the original post:

- Electric lights: Sounds like a great idea, as it well should. Be able to have light whenever and wherever you want it. It expands the freedom for work or play around the clock. When it interacted with the growth of industry, it also meant that factories could be run 24 hours a day. There was certainly pressure on the factory owners to do that, because if they didn't another owner would and could gain a major advantage. It took decades of labor strife to gradually set down laws and practices that equitably balanced the new situation. I'm not reductively saying all this flowed from the electric light, but advances of that sort had major societal impact which took a long time and much effort to sort out (and for those working in sweatshops in Bangladesh, may not have been sorted out yet).

How can the potential elimination of sleep not have similar effects? Yes, it's all well and good that many people will have the autonomy to control the implications for themselves. Many of the slashdotters reading this will be able to decide to not sleep for three days in order to party, or work on a hobby, or on a project for themselves, or even on a project for their employer because they freely choose to do so. My point is that there will be people who won't have that autonomy and will feel compelled to work 72 hours straight because that's the only way to keep their jobs. If we're going to embrace that kind of technology, we should be aware of the hazards.

Erradicae?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is sleep now vermin, a disease --something in need of anihilation? What's with the ignorant use of language?

Re:Erradicae?

[Volante3192]

How is that ignorant?

Main Entry: eradicate
Pronunciation: i-'ra-d&-"kAt
Function: transitive verb ...
1 : to pull up by the roots
2 : to do away with as completely as if by pulling up by the roots (programs to eradicate illiteracy)

Barring that, it certainly seems that it's being *treated* as a disease. Sleep interferes with productivity, therefore it must be cured.

It could also be a metaphor.

Grammatically, the word's perfectly fine. Just because you have a preconceived notion on how it should be used doesn't mean it's wrong.

10-20 years brought to you by....

[antirelic]

The girl who told you she only slept with 1 or 2 guys... ;-)

Re:10-20 years brought to you by....

[revlayle]

37 cocks...

Re:10-20 years brought to you by....

[Tongo]

Before or after the dead guy?

There is a huge difference...

[A beautiful mind]

between not feeling sleepy, and not needing sleep.

There is quite fascinating research into this subject actually with old people. Research determined that it's not that they need less sleep in old age, but that they can't sleep more and it is speeding up the consequences of old age.

So even if you don't feel sleepy, you need sleep and the effects would be quite devastating on a medium/long term. The problem with the drug industry is that it's more profitable for them to treat/mask sympthoms than to actually cure something. There are various anti-flu pills for example that only mask the sympthoms, so it will take a month or two to recover from a simple cold instead a week or two.

Re:There is a huge difference...

[kimvette]

When instead you could load up on garlic, onions, ginger root, ecchinecea, and other foods and herbs proven to have anti-viral qualities, and have cayenne and mint to treat the symptoms (sure, go ahead and tell me you can heat an habanero pepper without it clearing your sinuses).

Re:There is a huge difference...

[Vellmont]

The problem with the drug industry is that it's more profitable for them to treat/mask sympthoms than to actually cure something. There are various anti-flu pills for example that only mask the sympthoms, so it will take a month or two to recover from a simple cold instead a week or two.


Well, I think this statement implies that they could cure a cold or flu if they really wanted to. The truth is that we've never found a cure for any virus. People have been researching AIDS for 25 years and there's no real hope for a cure. The best we've been able to do for the flu is provide immunizations, or tamiflu. And even tamiflu only shortens the duration of flu. It's your immune system that actually kills the virus.

The point is that it's a lot EASIER to mask the symptoms than it is to cure them. You don't have to cook up some plot by the drug makers to not cure cold or flu, because it's just very very hard to do.

Re:There is a huge difference...

[gatesvp]

The problem with the drug industry is that it's more profitable for them to treat/mask sympthoms than to actually cure something. There are various anti-flu pills for example that only mask the sympthoms, so it will take a month or two to recover from a simple cold instead a week or two.

With that in mind, why don't we try our best to hop off the drug train? No sarcasm here. We all know the rules of healthy living: eat right, stay fit, sleep well, socialize, moderation etc. We know the basics that will keep us healthy.

So why don't just look at ALL drugs as being somewhat dangerous? And why don't we acknowledge that drug danger is (usually) directly proportional to the size of the problem it is attempting to fix? Light pain killer == smaller risk, Heavy pain killer == bigger risk, General Anesthetic == risk of death.

Now I'm OK with a little pain for gain: corrective surgery, dental work, emergency amputations... I mean some of this stuff is necessary. And if I just cut off your arm at the elbow, then help yourself to some opiates for a little while. But don't imagine that the opiates were good for you, they were just a necessary evil. We just gave you enough drugs so that you could maintain your body above the survival line. And don't ask for anti-depressants, of course you're depressed, you just lost your arm! Call up some friends, have some good laughs and start dealing with the fact that you're armless.

Drugs are rarely made to fix things, at best they usually mask the "problem" so that your body can fix things. An excess of a drug causes the body to adapt to that drug's presence. But hey, that's what your body does, it fixes things and it adapts to changes. To wreck an old adage, "Drugs don't fix people, people fix people", so let's imagine that drugs are just a dangerous tool (like nuclear power) and maybe we'll all be better for it.

Re:There is a huge difference...

[Lerc]

On the other hand wouldn't that also imply that there is a difference between feeling sleepy and needing sleep.

How much sleep do you need. Is your judgement of this based upon how sleepy you feel?

I know there is a tendency toward arrogance in science and many think that they can improve upon nature. It is not necessarily the case that they are wrong. Some may take a narrow view that overlooks the wider effects of drugs. This does not mean that this is the case for any particular drug or treatment.

tha shiznit

[fscrubjay]

It works. I use it to counter severe side effects of antidepressants. I went from sleeping 18 hours a day to 3 a night, feel no jitteryness and refinished an arts and crafts dining room table at 3am this morning after baking a tart for my son's school Thanksgiving celebration. After running a 3 hour seminar on Aguerre Wrath of God. It is crystal meth without the threat of reprisals from biker gangs, crack cocaine without the social stigma. I am just waiting for an arm to start growing out of the back of my head.

This is vastly overhyped.

[leifb]

As the article says, modafinil lets you go without sleeping for a couple of days. That's not much different than pulling a couple of all-nighters in college.

I know several people who use modafinil occasionally, and every one of them says they still feel awful if they miss too much sleep -- bad enough to know they're doing something stupid.

It's a huge leap from this, to a world where sleep is obsolete.

I'll pass on that software, thanks

[wardk]

-- Yves (not his real name), a 31- year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep.

I am sure his coding is SO WAY IMPORTANT that he just doesn't have time to sleep.

excuse me while I spend some time laughing...ok, I am back

my suggestion is that this dumbass programmer (who's name isn't Yves), get some friggin' sleep, you aren't that important. really

Re:I'll pass on that software, thanks

[Rob T Firefly]

I'd love to see the hideously important code he writes while flying on this stuff. I'll bet it's hilarious, and I really hope it's not running in any of my critical apps.

Re:I'll pass on that software, thanks

[surprise_audit]

The dude's in Seattle... Just avoid Vista and you should be good. :)

Do it the natural way

[stox]

Have a newborn child. You won't be getting any sleep for a long time.

Re:Do it the natural way

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. And I didn't need any drugs to get through it. The youngest of three is now four years old, so sleep is pretty consistent now, other than during child illness. When the first one came home, I was shocked at how disruptive it was. I mean, I new that life was going to be different, but wow! She was also a restless sleeper, prone to mild colic. There were many nights that I just walked laps around the couch with her on my shoulder. Two hours of sleep before she woke up, then two more hours of sleep before the alarm went off. Day after day for a year, fours hours of interrupted sleep. Now it is only an issue of dealing with the occasional nightmare or cleaning vomit out of the bed (and out of their hair). Then, in eight years the oldest will have her drivers license. Back to sleepless nights, I guess.

Sleep debit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sleep is like a bank account, you cannot keep withdrawing from it without putting something back, all the sleep you miss will have to be paid back eventually, with interest! I'm now in my late 40's and I can only sleep 6 hours, no more even if I try, but, I need that 6 hours or I cannot function.

Re:Sleep debit

[amrust]

I'm now in my late 40's and I can only sleep 6 hours, no more even if I try, but, I need that 6 hours or I cannot function.

I know what you mean. I'm coming up on 40, and I've noticed that I sleep less now than I did 5 years ago. Which is scary, because I always assumed that the "getting older = less sleep" thing didn't happen until you were MUCH older.

I guess we're all only as young as we feel, but still older than we think.

Re:Sleep debit

[Cro Magnon]

I'm 46, and though I go to bed and get out of bed about the same times I always did, there are a lot more nights when I wake up in the night, and end up listening to the radio for 1-2 hours until I drift back to sleep. I seldom did that until I hit 40.

Re:Sleep debit

[Anonymous Coward]

i think we've all got it twisted. Sleep is most likely not really needed. yeah, if you're all cracked out on meth or working a million hours a week, naturally, you would crash. i think all the "psychosis" involved in sleep deprivation is really not psychosis at all. there probably are spiders or ghosts or whatever it is that you think you see and think is not really there....it probably IS there, our brains just freakin can't accept it...so, we think we're going crazy. (my analogies would be the phantom pain/sensation an amputee experiences and sound frequencies).
so, basically, reality is not only what we actually observe, but things that are also "unseen" (they are unseen due to physical/mental/whatever limitations) and we are just not ready to deal with it.

so, we all buy into this "sleep is necessary" horseshyt- just so we can live in this comfy, happy illusion. it's scary, probably cuz IT IS SCARY.

me, i rarely sleep at all and i have no serious health problems....a tad paranoid, as you can see, but that's about it).

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

During the day I can give my children Retaline and in the night I can give them this.

And nobody can sue me because I love my children :-)

If sleepinh isn't needet...

[TransEurope]

...why the heck evolution developed it? You could be eaten
by a lion during the sleeping time. So sleeping must be such
a relevant behaviour, that its benefit is it worth to be possibly
killed by an predator. And that means it is better not to
prevent you from fall asleep, because the consequence must
be much worse than to be the lunch for another animal.

Re:What the hey? Psychosis?

[Rob86TA]

I seem to remember something about how sleep deprivation can and does cause extreme psychosis after a while.

I saw that episode of TNG as well! Fortunately we have an ample supply of Hydrogen here on earth.

sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha remember that episode of Star Trek NG where "Q" becomes a real human, and he's all panicking and flipping out and he's all "DUDES, WTF, I was in my quarters and I passed out for like 8 hours straight! WTF is up with THAT shit!!"

Too funny.
People are so goddamn stupid.

Re:sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think he was in the brig when he lost consciousness.

If you took this drug, you'd have time to RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

It operates without the debit. You stay awake and you don't need to catch up.

Shame on you, Taco!

[Bugs42]

from the we-already-discovered-meth dept.

You misspelled caffeine!

It worked well enough

[rubicon7]

... in the X-Files! http://redwolf.com.au/xfiles/season02/2x04.html

Know Your Source

[gumpish]

This is the same New Scientist that published Roger Shawyer's physics-defying theory about the so-called EM Drive? /. editors may as well start accepting submissions pointing to Weekly World News articles.

"Batboy divides by zero!"

WoW

[HappySqurriel]

It's reassuring to see that pharmaceutical companies can make a pill to solve every problem, even ones that weren't a real problem before they came up with a pill.

Sounds like someone hasn't done a Raid in WoW yet ...

ethics smethics

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: So how does modafinil work? "No one really knows," admits Vaught. He says that Cephalon thinks it understands the drug, but is keeping the details under wraps

The general pattern is to simply factor in the cost of wrongful death lawsuits into the long-term cost of doing business. First, Hide the ill effects from the FDA to get the drug approved. Fortunately, Bush and Republicans are willing to help by appointing people from industry who do not care about consumer safety to run the FDA.

Second, escrow enough money to cover legal expenses and settlements that you know you will face, because you know the drug is not safe. As long as profits are greater than the cost of killing people, the shareholders win, and executives win.

Great. Next thing for corporate slave drivers

[bADlOGIN]

I can hear it now: "We'll be happy to offer you the position at a full $40k per year. It is however, a mandatory 120 hour work week..."

Way of stopping certain epilepsy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Be interesting to read replies on this. I want to post as Mr. Anonymous for this post (for obvious reasons)....

I'm not going to disagree with earlier comments this isn't a good thing necessarily as as I really understand the need for good sleeping patterns. I have epilepsy caused by sleep deprivation. Without medication I would be totally fsck'd. With medication I usually get really bad migraines and small tremors when I haven't slept well. 95% of the time, no one would know.

I have to wonder though if this pill wouldn't have a better effect, given time and research of effectively eradicating the trigger mechanisms causing my epilepsy then current medications. If it lets others go without sleep, maybe it would trick (safely) my brain into doing the same thing. I know that my epilepsy is caused (as with probably other) poor regulation of the sodium-postassium channel on a specific site in the brain.

My condition is still misunderstood. No neurologists I've spoken to generally understand why people develop this type of epilepsy. They know from CAT and X-Rays where the seizures are being triggered. But no one knows why my brain developed that way. I never had nor suspected I would have epilepsy for more than the first 15 years of my life. A lot of people think of epilsepy being something where its always on (most severe cases) to being turned on by trigger mechanisms (lights, smells). Almost no one I've told knows of the sleep deprivation type though.

But are they "Trucker's Choice" ?

[turthalion]

Some people think I'm being suspicious and shouldn't comment on this thread, but I don't need pep pills to be suspicious. If I wanna comment on it, I'll comment on it. Who's gonna stop me? You, Pep Pill Boy? Pep boys, pills, Beverly Sills, oh boy ah boy. Uh oh-uh oh...

Uh oh. I gotta stop taking those pills...

The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[inviolet]

So this pill will surely have some side-effects, and some of them will likely be negative. Fine.

Now think about the value of your time. You get ~100 years here on Earth and that's all. You are wired to spend about a third of that time unconscious. An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything.

How much effort do you expend just to shave ten minutes off your commute? Or to save three minutes standing in line?

What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[SpaghettiPattern]

An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything.

I tend to work out problems in my sleep. I'm not shitting you.

Besides phisical recovery my believe is that sleep is needed to defragment the brain. If only we had a better file system in our brain!

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Austerity Empowers]

Absolutely 0. If my employers found out about all this extra time I'd just spend it all sitting in front of a screen anyway. At least this way I have a reason to come home every day.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Viol8]

"What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?"

Not much if you end up spending them bouncing off padded walls in a sanatorium.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[MasterOfUniverse]

But what about dreams? surely dreams are worth something. Wouldnt you miss something in life if you never dream? (not sure if its worth 33 years of life tho).

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[geekoid]

"An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything."

that is not true, unlkess you are brain dead. Sleep provides what the brain needs.

Now, if this took care of that problems, then yeah, this is a breakthrough that will change the world.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[drooling-dog]

How much effort do you expend just to shave ten minutes off your commute? Or to save three minutes standing in line? What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?

On the other hand, look at how much we spend on entertainment and such just to kill the time before we die! Yes, some of it may be actually enjoyable, but most of us spend a lot of time watching crap just because it's on.

And here's another thing to consider: How much of that extra time will actually be yours? Think of how much more of your time employers will expect, once you free up those 6-8 hours per night. We'll be looking at standard 12-14 hour workdays, and use of the drug will be virtually mandatory to be competitive in the workplace.

As for me, I'm going back to sleep.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[SlightlyMadman]

"An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything."

that is not true, unlkess you are brain dead. Sleep provides what the brain needs.

There are two meaningful things accomplished in sleep: REM and tissue regeneration. You only need less than 2 hours of REM per night, and while it normally only occurs in certain cycles, your brain will go directly into those cycles if it needs to. This means you're capable of getting by on just 2 hours of sleep if it's mostly REM.

Tissue regeneration is a bit more tricky, because it only happens in the deep sleep cycles that precede REM. If you're a body builder, you should probably sleep significantly more than 2 hours per night, or you'll never regenerate the damaged tissue properly that allows you to grow stronger muscles.

If you're a flabby computer geek, chances are you receive very little muscle damage in a day. You could probably get by with 1 or 2 deep sleep cycles a week, like catching up with a full 8 hours every Sunday.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[njko]

But sleep is nice.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[b0s0z0ku]

Now think about the value of your time. You get ~100 years here on Earth and that's all. You are wired to spend about a third of that time unconscious. An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything.

The question is: would going without sleep make you live (say) 50 years less? Far better to focus on life extension, and interfering with a process that rebuilds the body is unlikely to do that...

-b.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[The One and Only]

I find my sleeping life more fulfilling and oftentimes just as productive as my waking life. I think I debug code in my sleep because I wake up with the necessary fixes at the front of my mind.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[avajcovec]

Oh please.

An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything.

You don't dream?

Now think about the value of your time. ... You are wired to spend about a third of that time unconscious. ... What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?

You'd be better off realizing that this "unconscious" state is actually quite valuable and potentially under much more of your control than you suspect. All it takes is a quick suggestion to yourself that "I remember my dreams" before going to bed each night to start improving your dream recall. If you want to go an extra step, start practicing lucid dreaming. Seriously.

This idea that sleep is a useless state where you are completely unconscious is detrimental. Sleep can be a very active, creative endeavor if you choose to utilize it.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The problem is that you are messing with biology without even considering potential negative consequences. There is no magic bullet in medicine. What if, instead of living to be 100, with this no-sleep pill, you die at 50 instead? Would you still think it is worthwhile?

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[ColdWetDog]

It is certainly amusing that all of these posters wanking along about what a wonderful, productive life they would have if they didn't sleep are apparently wasting quite a bit of time, on, you guessed it -

Slashdot.

Nothing more, your honor. The defense rests.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you have never dreamt...

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Prof.Phreak]

So this pill will surely have some side-effects,

I'd imagine a side-effect might be ``shorten lifespan by 30%''.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[x3rc3s]

Are you kidding? Time spent sleeping has to be the happiest six - eight hours of my day!

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[codemachine]

> What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?

Well it'd probably cost you a death about 33 years earlier, so I'd say it is not worth anything at all.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[justinlee37]

I experience a lot when I sleep. In my experience, if something is troubling me emotionally, I can "sleep through it" -- in the morning, things just never seem as bad. I've always inferred that I am subconsciously resolving my "waking issues" through dreaming.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[equex256]

I practice lucid dreaming, i'm still conscious and able to experience beeing a "Viking" if i want to. Lucid Dreaming does not seem to interfer with regular sleep processes. I'll keep my bed tidy for the forseeable future thank you very much.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[lordtrickster]

Given how often I can have a problem at work, go home, sleep, wake up in the morning and know the solution, I don't consider being unconscious a waste of time. A solid 7-8 hours of sleep is very productive time for me, I have all kinds of interesting ideas for perusal by my consciousness when I wake up.

Sounds like you just aren't using your sleep time to its fullest.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[trongey]

...Now think about the value of your time. You get ~100 years here on Earth and that's all. You are wired to spend about a third of that time unconscious. An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything. ...
What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?...

Oh! That would suck most egregiously!
I hope I don't get 100yrs on this rock. My plans for the future are based on a statistical male longevity of ~71yrs in my family. If I live much beyond that I'm totally screwed.
If you top that off with having to consciously experience 50% more of it then I'll probably have to check out early.
The other night I dreamed I was at the beach and got to pet a baby whale that just swam right up to me. It was the most awesome feeling. And let's not forget those dreams where we get to fly around sans airplane. Nothing that cool is ever gonna happen while I'm awake.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[hab136]

But what about dreams? surely dreams are worth something. Wouldnt you miss something in life if you never dream? (not sure if its worth 33 years of life tho).

I rarely dream (or at least remember dreaming), so they're not worth much to me.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the relationship between metabolism and longevity, I suspect that staying up and active instead of sleeps would increase the rate of aging. Still sounds like a good deal to me.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[unc0nn3ct3d]

I have to go along with this quote.. Fuck sleep, I don't solve any damn problems in my sleep.. Did you think that maybe if you sat down consciously and thought about the problem for 8 hours instead of sleeping you would have a solution in a lot shorter time.. Now I am not saying that sleep isn't needed for the physical recovery but as far as mental productivity goes and what I can have done then why the hell would I want to waste it in a bed for 8 hours no matter how good it might feel?

And lets be serious here, anyone who is self-employed which I am, works 14-18 hours a day anyways, you telling me that I can work my normal 16 hour day, have 4 hours of time off and wake up feeling like I slept for 8? Of course I could work less, but that just isn't going to happen so I'll paraphrase the end of that article:

For millions of people, good sleep and productive wakefulness are already elusive, night work or nightlife a reality, and the "stimulant-sedative" loop all too familiar. As Vaught puts it, "We're already there." So why not make it as clean and safe as possible?

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, your experience is supported by evidence--people who concentrate on a problem right before going to sleep often figure out the solution to the problem after waking up.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Shads]

Good point, and lets be honest... 24h/day 7/days a week awake for 50 years... vs 16h/day 7/days a week for 100 years... I know which I'd pick just based on how I feel at 30 and the changes from when I was a teenager. Kinda makes retirement moot though.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[PurifyYourMind]

I'm fairly tired of this "sleep is a waste of time" idea. Do you really think evolution would have cranked out organisms who are as vulnerable as we are during sleep (there's a reason we're afraid of the dark--predators) if not for very good reasons? Memory consolidation happens when we sleep. It's pretty easy to prove--and has been done in studies--that we don't remember X nearly as well when not sleeping after encountering X. Not to mention rest for the body. Cranked up meth users crash *hard* after being awake for days/weeks, to the point of suicidal depression in some cases.

Believe it or not, even if you don't remember your dreams, a lot is still going on in the brain when you sleep. I'm sure you're familiar with the "just sleep on it" method of generating insightful ideas. That's not just a coincidence; the brain is still chugging along when we're "unconscious". In fact, we're not truly unconscious--ever had the experience of outside events (phone ringing, etc.) affecting your dreams? We're still sensing things (to a more limited degree, sure), even if we appear dead to the world.

-Mike Hunt

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Jamie Lokier]

I dream for at least a third of the day while awake, in addition to sleep time (which is currently about 8 hours, but varies from 2 hours to 20 hours per 24 hours at extremes; yes I have problem sleep).

Not sleeping (or sleeping much less) wouldn't mean I stop dreaming, but it might mean I got more things done that I'd like to do in between dreams.

That said, day dreams are of quite a different quality, being more consciously led than night dreams.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[inviolet]

I'm fairly tired of this "sleep is a waste of time" idea. Do you really think evolution would have cranked out organisms who are as vulnerable as we are during sleep (there's a reason we're afraid of the dark--predators) if not for very good reasons?

Sure. That's not the point. The point is that eight hours is a wasteful amount of time to spend on that sort of maintenance. Especially since that maintenance has no value that we can experience.

This new drug is -- hopefully -- the beginning of our effort to cancel or redirect those "very good reasons". Of course, this first stab at the problem is not a solution at all, it is more of a random shotgun blast into the dark... but at least we have begun to solve the problem. After all, and as I said at the first, the value of an extra eight hours per day is colossal.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[m0rm3gil]

"What, then, would 33 extra years be worth?"

Extremely little when you're insane.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[PurifyYourMind]

No value that we can experience? Did you even read my post? Jeez, do a simple experiment. Study for a test and then get no sleep, and then study for a similar test after sleeping. Guess what? You can feel a difference in how easy it is to remember (as well as concentrate, control mood, etc.). Slashdotters... yeesh. They don't read the article or the comments.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[Alsee]

I tend to work out problems in my sleep.
Besides phisical recovery my believe is that...

Maybe you should take a nap between hitting the preview and post buttons to work out those spelling and grammer problems :D

-

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[inviolet]

No value that we can experience? Did you even read my post? Jeez, do a simple experiment. Study for a test and then get no sleep, and then study for a similar test after sleeping. Guess what? You can feel a difference in how easy it is to remember (as well as concentrate, control mood, etc.).

The whole point of this discussion was that we might develop a pill that provides the same benefits as sleep. Ergo, it will be perfectly easy to remember, concentrate, control mood, etc. without actually having to lie inert for eight hours.

Slashdotters... yeesh. They don't read the article or the comments.

Oh I think they read the comments, but some have trouble with the reading comprehension. Perhaps you need additional sleep.

Re:The other flip side of a no-sleep drug

[PurifyYourMind]

Again with the not reading what I write. I really wonder at the literacy of the computer geek crowd sometimes. Anyway, I understand what a pill is supposed to do. Duh. I was replying to the ignorant assertion that sleep yields no benefits that we consciously experience, which anyone can, with minimal investigation, find out is crap.

What about the physical impacts....

[Lunch2000]

It seems everyone focuses on the neurological impact of skipping sleep. What about the physical; from what I have read your body also uses sleep to heal and rest. For instance what kind of strain is placed on your heart when you regularly go for days without sleep. When you sleep you lie down, your heart slows and does not have to work as hard to pump blood through your body. It essentially gets a rest. What happens when you stop doing this. Will people who start living a sleepless life style suddently drop dead of cardiac failure at 35? What are the long term physical effects of removing such a significant metabolic process from your life? Sure you can fool the brain, but can you fool the rest of the body?

Lunch

This pill will 'cure' many 'sleeping disorders'

[xplenumx]

This reminds me of a technician I had who used to fall asleep at his bench. He was convinced that he had sleep disorder and would bounce from doctor to doctor looking for a cure. It turns out he was right - his sleep disorder was called Online Gaming. While the solution to his problem was cheap and easy, it didn't involve a pill so he kept looking for an alternate explanation.

Ambien's a hell of a drug.

[Thalagyrt]

I'm on Ambien currently for insomnia. Kinda related, but not completely, since it's a sleep aid.

I really should stop IMing people after I've taken it, and just get right in bed and turn the lights off instead of waiting a few minutes for it to kick in.
Me [2:44:53 AM]: but if ou take e wee uij think i;m pretttu wwriiiki whwehjeejmhjssssshhhnnmnmnmsnmsnmsngnnhhnaASseeses s

What the HELL is that?

Re:Ambien's a hell of a drug.

[killeena]

Ambien really is crazy. I had to take it after I wasn't able to sleep for 4 days straight (probably due to switching to a 12 hour midnight shift work schedule). I remember waking up one time in the middle of an Ambien induced sleep. I was totally confused. Apparently I thought I was supposed to be doing something important at the time, so I got out of bed, went to my fiance and said, "I am totally supposed to be doing something right now, but I forgot what it was"(What I was supposed to be doing was sleeping, heh). My fiance actually took it once to help with her insomnia, and she said it made her hallucinate a little bit. Since I got my sleeping schedule back in order, I have vowed not to ever take it again unless I am in the situation where I haven't slept for multiple days.

Apparently there are live journal communities dedicated to the recreational use of Ambien. Definately very potent stuff.

WoW

[The evil doctor Matt]

Just think this stuff could enable a week long LAN party with no sleep. I gave up WoW so that I could have a job AND sleep... Guess now I'll have plenty of time to level up my Warlock...

Ride the Snake!

[Weaselmancer]

First thing I thought of.

Hallucinations.

[MaWeiTao]

Don't people start experiencing LSD-like hallucinations after going for several days without sleep? Drugs may be able to keep a person awake but I don't see how they be a substitute for REM sleep.

Re:Hallucinations.

[Prophet of Nixon]

Well, I've done 5 days without sleep, with no drugs, just willpower and lots of water, and I didn't have any hallucinations. From having attempted several periods of this duration, I can say a few things:

1) Eat very minimally, and wait until after the hunger pangs have gone to even consider it. If you eat when your body wants it, you'll feel satisfied and get tired.

2) Drink a lot, around a liter an hour. No soda, though cold tea seems to be OK.

3) Move around a lot. If you have to sit to work, get up and walk around whenver you're thinking. Print stuff to read as you walk, if you just need to be able to read. Walking outside is better, as having real airflow is helpful.

4) After the second day you'll get really cold. Ignore this and don't try to warm yourself up, you'll get tired.

5) After the third day you'll lose all sense of heat/cold anyway, so its OK. You'll also be very sensitive to light, not that its painful, but that everything looks overbright and oversaturated, its kind of neat. People reflect a lot of light that you don't normally notice. So do shiny floors.

6) Past the third day pain resistance drops a lot and/or nerve sensitivity increases a lot. I usually don't notice most things short of a decent puncture wound, but lots of things hurt after 3 or 4 days without sleep.

7) It may be best to avoid people after the third day. Every time I've stayed up past that, I've always 'lost' while talking to people. On the five day stint, I was having a conversation with someone, leaned against a wall for a moment, and was out cold for almost 10 hours. Fortunately the person in question knew me and dragged me out of the way into an empty room.

Re:Hallucinations.

[Shads]

I also did some sleep deprivation self-studies when i was in high school (over the summer mostly)... my longest stint with no chemical assistance was a bit over 9 days (221 hours.)

Things I've noticed several times I've went sleep deprived
Day 1) Hard to stay up at "Bedtime".
o Normal functioning
o Memory, Speech, and Physical abilities normal
Day 2) Easy to stay up
o Normal functioning
o Memory, Speech, and physical abilities mostly-normal
o Trouble concentrating on complex mental things, like programming a simple 3d game
Day 3) Easy to stay up
o Normal functioning
o Memory, Speech, anad physical abilities mostly-normal
o Trouble concentrating on complex mental things, like programming a simple 3d game
o Minor issues with memory and extremely complex speech (like most complex poetry or tongue twisters)
Day 4) Tired, can't get comfortable or will fall asleep
o Impaired functioning
o Memory, Speech, and physical abilities considerably lessened
o Can't concentrate longer than a few minutes
o Complex speech is impossible you sound like you had a stroke
o Physically exhausted and "sore"
o Minor visual only halucinations
Day 5) Tired, can't get comfortable or will fall asleep
o Impaired functioning
o Memory, Speech, and physical abilities considerably lessened
o Can't concentrate longer than a few minutes
o Complex speech is impossible you sound like you had a stroke
o Physically exhausted and "sore"
o Hallucinations getting severe with all senses hard to tell from reality
o Diminished appetite
Day 6) Exhausted, effort required to stay awake
o extremely impaired functioning
o Memory, Speech, and Physical abilities are crap
o can't concentrate for over a minute
o speech is going in the crapper
o body is sore like you've worked out for hours
o Hallucinations are so severe you can't tell them from reality at all
o time lag when in conversations
o everything takes on a surreal cast, nothing seems like its normal
o Pissy and angry, snapping at people
o Diminished appetite
Day 7) Exhausted, effort required to stay awake
o extremely impaired functioning
o Memory, Speech, and Physical abilities are crap
o can't concentrate for more than a few seconds
o speech is horrible, monotone, and increasingly rare, very start and stop
o no energy hard to move
o Hallucinations are so severe you can't tell them from reality at all
o time lag when in conversations
o everything takes on a surreal cast, nothing seems like its normal
o Lethargic and slow to respond
o No appetite
Day 8) Exhausted, effort required to stay awake
o extremely impaired functioning
o Memory, Speech, and Physical abilities are crap
o can't concentrate for more than a few seconds
o speech is horrible, monotone, and increasingly rare, very start and stop
o no energy hard to move
o Hallucinations are so severe you can't tell them from reality at all
o time lag when in conversations
o everything takes on a surreal cast, nothing seems like its normal
o Lethargic and slow to respond
o No appetit

Thought I'd heard this one before...

[Anonymous Coward]

from Macbeth, Act II, Scene II

MACBETH

        Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
        Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
        Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
        The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
        Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
        Chief nourisher in life's feast,--

Not so uncommon...

[brendanoconnor]

Only getting 5 hours of sleep or so is not that uncommon amongst people that work nights. I work the night shift and I will typically go several days with only taking 5 hours of sleep. Eventually (usually after 4 or so days) I will get a full 8 to 10 once I get a day off but typically 5 hours is plenty.

I will say this is something you have to train your body to get use to but it is certainly doable without drugs.

Brendan

Plunder!

[ChiChiCuervo]

But Taco, being from muskegon (or is it benton harbor? eh.. same difference), don't you pretty much have to rape and plunder your way through town anyway, just in the process of every day life?

Electric shirt?

[steveo777]

From TFA:"Nor is it all about drugs: one research team even talks about developing a wearable electrical device that can wake your brain up at the flick of a switch."

Sounds interesting. I see some drawbacks, however. One would be that you may wake up looking like Yahoo Serious. The other drawback is that these shirts could easily become mandatory at the office, offering a quick 'encouraging' jolt to the system whenever productivity drops...

Re:Electric shirt?

[zxnos]

s(ZAP)l(ZAP)a(ZAP)s(ZAP)h(ZAP)d(ZAP)o(ZAP)t(ZAP).( ZAP)o(ZAP)r(ZAP)g(ZAP)

i think it slows productivity...

Re:Electric shirt?

[ColdWetDog]

The other drawback is that these shirts could easily become mandatory at the office, offering a quick 'encouraging' jolt to the system whenever productivity drops...

No, they would be too expensive. Cattle prods are cheap. And you only need one.

Boring, Boring, Boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn.

Air force

[Joe The Dragon]

Major William Umbach and Major Harry Schmidt of the Illinois Air National Guard mistook Canadian anti-tank and machine-gun exercises as enemy fire and dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on members of the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

According to the defense lawyers of the two pilots, Schmidt and Umbach were told by their superiors to use "go pills" (amphetamines) on their missions, and blamed the incident on the drugs. Schmidt's defense also blamed the fog of war, specifically poor and needlessly complex communication procedures regarding the identification of friendly forces on the ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Schmidt_(Air_Na tional_Guard)

In the Future...

[eno2001]

...I predict that in the next ten years we'll have a new disorder: "Soft Drug Abuse". This will be the illegitimate use of prescription drugs that have mild effects on the user and don't necessarily interfere with their day-to-day lives, but are still addiction problems.

Sounds bad.

[monkeySauce]

Funny, I heard a story on the radio earlier today about a sleep disorder where people become unable to sleep at all. You know what happens to them? They die. I think the drug companies can keep their anti-sleep pills. I don't think I want to fuck around with not sleeping or reducing my sleep.

Muscle regeneration?

[Ikeya]

While this sounds great for a day or two when you really need it, this could be detrimental long term just to your muscles. When you sleep is when your body repairs itself. Your muscles will go to pot if you never sleep.

Re:What the hey? Psychosis?

[RedOregon]

Found the answer to the second part... it was in the March 1975 NatGeo. Guy's name was Siffre, and his sleep cycles varied widely... guess I was sleepy when I read it.

Fairly decent ref at http://www.irvthomas.com/thesis/thesis6.html (scroll down about halfway, coupla paras above the white chart) and more if you have some time to kill and Google handy.

At Last!

[Edge Hypermatter]

I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. Something that will allow me to skip sleep, or at least shorten the time spent sleeping considerably. Caffeine is great, however it's usually a quick boost followed by a crash, and then it will keep me awake when I become too tired to continue doing anything. I can't wait to get my hands on this Modafinil so I can finally negate the neccessary evil of sleep. I don't know why you guys like sleeping so much...

When will they discover the side effects for the d

[slmdmd]

Why does a IT guy needs to be awake long hours, are they not billing the client in terms of man hours. or is the guy inefficient to finish his job as per the project plan, The drug companies keep inventing useless drugs, I love sleep, I love dreams. But I don't like people dying in their teens to TBM, AIDS etc.. A drug for TBM does not exist today only because the drug companies are bent of finding the fat reducing drug so that it gets them more bucks. So no funds for TBM drug research. TBM claims the highest number of victims in the late night workers category. Can't help it, Greed has no limit.

How long from possible to mandatory?

[kevintron]

Laws limiting the hours of work employers can demand are often based on safety arguments: tired workers have more accidents. Thus ideas like the 8-hour work day (at least, for work like driving trucks, operating heavy equipment, and working on factory assembly lines) get just enough support from the insurance lobby to overcome opposition from other business sectors.

If prescription drugs change that fact, making it possible to extend work hours dramatically without increasing accident rates, will it take long before employers require work shifts that run for days at a time?

No sleep, no melatonin, more cancer

[RonBurk]

In addition to the effects of sleep on the brain is the ever-strengthening hypothesis that melatonin helps fight cancer. Pineal gland production of melatonin is suppressed by light (mostly of a particular frequency) hitting the retina.

Thus, we see (observational, but well-powered and not sloppy) studies that associate 9 or more hours of sleep with significantly less breast cancer than in women getting only 8 hours of sleep. We see mouse models in which melatonin-depeleted blood from women stimulates growth of xenograft tumors. There is a known biochemical mechanism by which melatonin can interfere with the growth of cancer.

Finally, I've recently discovered (another geek-turns-doctor case :-) that many cases of "morning stiffness" are actually the result of abnormally high melatonin levels. There is growing speculation that melatonin helps modulate inflammation to keep it from damaging healthy tissue, and also that there is a feedback route from the immune system to the pineal gland. I speculate that melatonin-induced morning stiffness is the body saying "stay down, you idiot, and stay out of the light -- I'm trying to heal you".

One of the reasons sleep evolved may simply be cancer prevention.

While I would love to be awake 24 hours a day, I would not like to raise my odds of getting clinically significant cancer. So, I'll continue to sleep in a darkened bedroom, and will avoid any such drug as this until there's a few decades of evidence that it doesn't increase your odds of dying in a tediously predictable manner.

Re:No sleep, no melatonin, more cancer

[geekoid]

could you were special glasses to keep the frequency of light from hitting the retina?

How does the light corrispond with being indoors? do light bulbs produce it?

Your description sounds like a technical issue that could be overcome. What if you could get sunglasses that also helped fight cancer?

As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[alexfeig]

I did sleep studies for a year. I was the guy that brought patients in, hooked up electrodes for brain activity, belts for breathing, electrodes on the legs for leg movement, etc -- then I sat in a small office staring at a computer screen for sometimes 12 hours on end watching them sleep making sure nothing went wrong, as well as making notes on potential sleep disorders. Apnea, Periodic Leg Movements, mainly. Obviously this job required that I work graveyards. After about 8 months on the job, my sleep schedule began to skip. I met my wife, I was trying to maintain a social life in the afternoons, etc. I started staying up when I got home until sometimes 2PM before going back to work at 8PM. Bad news. We obviously had a doctor on the staff, and he called us sleep techs into a room and we discussed the latest discoveries, etc. What came up was Modafinil. He mentioned that while he recommended Melatonin, Modafinil is approved for graveyard workers. Shortly thereafter I started taking Modafinil. I'll tell you, it works. Caffine is a terrible substitute. I used to drink so much coffee on top of caffine pills I OD'd more than once on it. Modafinil had 0 side effects (for me), other than the occasional slight bit of anxiety. It kept me awake, and it made me feel like I didn't even need sleep. When I'd get home, I could easily go to sleep because while it made you not FEEL like you didn't need to sleep, actually falling asleep wasn't difficult. When I would wake up I felt rested. I used Modafinil for about 4 months total -- and if I ever feel compelled to ruin my life with another graveyard shift, I'll be taking it up again. It's a marvellous drug.

Re:As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[Phoenix666]

Where do you get Modafinil? It seems like it's prescription-only.

Re:As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[alexfeig]

Yes, it is prescription only.

Re:As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[dfenstrate]

I ask this as an interested graveyard shift worker- is working the graveyard shift alone enough to justify a prescription for a bonafide doctor, not some internet character? And I ask this knowing you're not a doctor.

I work a rotating shift, so I have to get on a midnight shift schedule for a week and then get right off of it again. Obviously it's a pain in the ass ob both ends and I already use caffiene and sleeping pills to try to smooth things over.

Re:As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[slashmojo]

Obviously this job required that I work graveyards.

Those guys are way beyond a sleep disorder.. if Modafinil woke them up it must be good! ;)

Re:As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[alexfeig]

I believe it is. As you pointed out I'm not a doctor so I'm not quite sure, for all I know he was just helping me out. That being said I do recall a conversation where I was informed the FDA had approved it for 3rd shift workers. I'm also not sure how many doctors are informed about the medication. The doctor that prescribed it to me was working for the company, and was a Sleep Medicine doctor. His entire practice was just devoted towards sleep disorders. As far as the rotating shift, and again I'm not a doctor, I think it would help.

Re:As someone that has actually used Modafinil

[UncleJooky]

I currently use Modafinil. I first heard about this drug about a month ago and decided it was worth looking into. I wasn't interested in staying awake for days at a time. Instead I was interested in just plain staying awake during the day. Yes, I am fully aware that getting a good night's sleep will allow me to stay awake during the day. However, I actually like doing things during the time I am not at werq. Sometimes that cuts into a good night's sleep.

I talked to a pharmacist about the drug and got his take on it. Obviously, he recommended not taking anything that wasn't prescribed, and not talking a doctor into a scrip that wasn't needed. Having covered his butt, he also told me that most OTC meds are much harsher on our bodies than Modafinil. This chat gave me enough information to base a decision on.

I got some. For those of you out there wondering how...I will only say that a credit card and an internet connection can get you just about anything.

So I have been taking it daily for about a month now. What do I get out of it? Not much. The biggest difference is that I don't spend all day wishing I could go for a nap. I just don't think about sleep anymore. I have also noticed that I tend to be more focused on what I am doing at work and have even started staying at work until I have completed a task, as opposed to leaving as soon as the clock hit the end of business hours.

I missed a dose last week. I went home for lunch, as I usually do, and slept for two hours. For those of you screaming that it happened because I was sleep deprived, hold on a moment longer. Since starting on Modafinil, I have paid a lot more attention to how much sleep I am getting. I get about 8-9 hours most nights. The short nights are about 6 hours. This is hardly sleep deprived.

I did try, half heartedly, once, to make an endurance run on Modafinil. I took my normal daily dose, a booster at lunch and then another in the evening. I finished up a project I was working on at about 0200 hours. I got bored and went to bed. At the time I felt like I could stay awake, if I wanted to, but I didn't want to, a didn't try.

The benefits of Modafinil, in my experience are:
Being alert during the day, but not hyped like with caffiene, taurine etc.
Working for a full day, resulting in higher job satisfaction and less stress
No 'crash' when the sugar, caffiene, taurine etc. have finished hyping me up.
Improved mood
The bad stuff:
I can't get this stuff legally.

So, there you go. Another opinion based on experience. I haven't addressed the long term side effects issue. I only have an opinion about that. For now, I'm not concerned. My quality of life has really improved from this. It may not sound like much, but it is a lot to me. For those of you concerned about controlling our bodies through chemistry, I challenge you to give up caffiene, nicotine, sugar, or any other of the fantastic things we use to get through the day, then you can talk about how bad controlling our bodies through chemistry is. I have given up caffiene as a requirement. I drink coffee, sometimes, socially. The sodas are gone too. The only other stim I still use in nicotine. I'm afraid I'm hooked on that one.

Hope this satisfies some of your curiosity about Modafinil.

What a nightmare

[OriginalArlen]

In the words of the Manics' song: I live to fall asleep. Life without sleep would be my idea of pure hell. And a life of permanent, 24 hour sleep is... my dream.

(Professional help was sought, but proved not to be much use. But hey, thanks for the thought.)

I always thought of sleep as tine for me to ...

[crovira]

do a "re-org" on my memories.

I get by on four hours of sleep and I have for over 35 years.

Since I'm not too active (just sitting on a chair or lying on a bed,) I tend to let my body relax completely while still remaining conscious enough to read a book or surf the web. (I read very boring books. :-)

Then as long as i get quality sleep for four hours a night and let my mind do its "re-org", I retain almost everything I read as well as most of what I did the day before. (I also insist on putting everything down in writing. Makes me a real pain in the ass as a manager! [None of the "I said, you said" crap.] :-)

Sleep is not really required.

[kraahl]

I saw a documentary stating that the reason we sleep so much is not because we needed it, but because it was an evolutionary advantage. If we slept a lot we werent out wandering about getting killed by tigers and falling off cliffs and as previously stated, REM-sleep is not required for memory recording.

Re:Sleep is not really required.

[mha]

Apparently whoever produced that documentary didn't have enough sleep.

One thing happening during sleep has to do with the way human memory functions.

There are three stages of memory:
- ultra short term memory
- short term memory
- long term memory

The first one is entirely "electric". The second and especially the third one are chemical. That means during the very short time (a few seconds only) you remember something in your ultra short term memory the storage is done using electrical signals, but if it gets into short term memory (that would be ca. 20 minutes, I believe), and then from there into long term memory (only if there are enough associations to make it worth it to the longterm mem. gatekeeper functions of your brain) the information is stored in chemical form - and not in one place, but all over your brain! So if you (physically) loose brain, you don't actually loose memory, it's just that your memories become more fuzzy.

Anyway, during sleep some things happen that help put some memories into long term storage.

None of this is my own wisdom, I'm reading "Denken, Lernen, Vergessen" by Frederic Vester - who's a German. That VERY interesting book is about learning and talks about brain functions to help understand learning. It was written in the 70s and last updated 2001 - it's very popular in Germany for good reason. However, still way too few people, especially those responsible for educating others, read it...

Re:Sleep is not really required.

[kraahl]

I guess my wording was clumsy, Im sure we do need sleep, what we do not need (according to the documentary) is the large amount of sleep we currently enjoy. The time we sleep have been steadily declining over the last decades with no recorded side effects.

Remeber that DJ who stayed up

[drewsup]

He did a radio promo for a week with NO sleep and plenty of speed to help him. He started dreaming while he was awake (hallucinations) saying there were spiders in his shoes and generally freaking out in the last three days. He NEVER recovered from it! He was described before as realy nice fella who would do anything for anyone, and afterward turned into a total asshole. He lost his job, his wife and family, and eventually shot himself after years of being an alcoholic. Thanks Pharmacon business, I think I'll take my chances on my new sleepnumber bed,, fucking assholes!

Ah... sleep deprivation buzz

[rajafarian]

My favorite!

Since its R.E.M. sleep

[nih]

will they be known as The Shiny Happy People
sorry:/

Where can you get Modafinil?

[Phoenix666]

I tried to get it from Canada, and they require a prescription. So I'm wondering where the software developer in the article got it.

I for one would love to get more hours out of my day. I tried polyphasic sleep but never could get the uninterrupted 1/2 hr in the middle of the day to nap.

Re:Where can you get Modafinil?

[The MESMERIC]

I will sell you mine.
Oh did you say Canada, sorry buddy that is way over the Atlantic.

Equanox, from Zaibatsu Pharmaceuticals

[HTH NE1]

"I used to be concerned and nervous about the future. Sometimes I'd get scared before an important event, such as childbirth, or a family funeral. Hey, sometimes you need a little help navigating life's trouble spots. That's when I discovered Equanox."

"After the divorce and losing little Tommy, life was getting me down. I couldn't focus on anything at work. After trying Equanox, I've been employee of the month three times in a row!"

"I used to fall unconscious for hours at a time, but now with Equanox, I never need to sleep!"

"Equanox is new, from Zaibatsu Pharmaceuticals. Ask your doctor about Equanox... today."

"Equanoxmaycausenausea lossofsleep blurredvision leakage kidneyproblemsandbreathingirregularities. DonottakeEquanoxifyouareoperatinganymachinery drivingacar pregnant achildoflowage unhappyorifyourfamilyhasahistoryofmentaldisorders. "

"Equanox. Softening life's harsh realities."

Reference

[everphilski]

Ralph Wiggum: Miss Hoover, I ate my paste.

Miss Hoover: Thats ok Ralph just go to sleep.

Ralph Wiggum: Oh Boy! Sleep! Thats where Im a viking!

The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[shambalagoon]

The true horror of this drug is that if it does become commonplace and people need less sleep, my bet is that capitalism will adapt itself to this new reality and we will soon be working 14-16 hour days.

Dont believe it? Look what happened as women entered the workplace in larger numbers in the last few decades (of course this is a good thing). As the number of workers increased, the relative incomes fell. When once a single worker could bring in enough money to support himself, his spouse, and his 2.5 kids, now it is almost necessary for both parents to work to be able to make ends meet. Think what it would be like if capitalism hadnt adapted to this influx of workers - each parent could work a 20-hour week and have the same relative income as 50 years ago.

Likewise, as waking time becomes less scarce, those willing and able to work longer hours will get the jobs and steadily raise the bar and the expectations of what's a normal amount to work each week. Maybe they'll get paid more and the increasing wealth will cause the cost of goods and services to rise, which increases the need for working the longer hours.

IANAE (I am not an Economist) so I'm probably wrong on some details, but this seems like a likely general trend, IMHO.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[LunaticTippy]

I disagree. You're comparing different lifestyles. The stay-at-home-mom generation had one small house, one car, and a couple of appliances. They ate out rarely, packed lunches, and had one telephone.

If a typical family lived in a 1200 square foot home, had one car, only the home phone, no cable/internet/cellphone, and didn't blow money on dining out and buying things they'd only need one income to do it.

I know there has been flat/declining real wages for some time now, but our standards are higher.

I think some people would be better off working less. You end up paying a lot for child care, eating out, 2nd car, etc.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[DigiShaman]

The same thing happened with computers. We've been told in the past that computers will make it so you work less hours for the same amount of work. In reality, we work the same amount of hours to achieve more work.

The human race is enslaved to ourselves. I fear we might reach a breaking point if we haven't already. I mean seriously, just how MUCH blood can you squeeze from a turnip?

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[GreenSwirl]

If a typical family lived in a 1200 square foot home, had one car, only the home phone, no cable/internet/cellphone, and didn't blow money on dining out and buying things they'd only need one income to do it.

The tricky part is convincing the stay-at-home spouse to refrain from buying all the things the TV tells them to. It takes a stout anti-capitalist mentality to ward off the constant brainwashing (in American society, at least).

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[ArsonSmith]

This mythical time of when people could support a family on one paycheck seems to stem from the high pressure idealistic 1950s'ish sales man that was publicized big time at the time. The only reason it now "requires" two incomes is because the standard of living has improved by that much. My mother grew up with dirt floors and an outhouse in the 1950s I'm pretty sure I could afford that standard of living working at McDonald's. I just might not have a flat screen TV and a DVD player.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[LunaticTippy]

I was raised in a family with a stay-at-home mom in the 70s-80s, in a neighborhood where this was unusual. It was a bit tough because my friends had a lot more toys than I did, saw more movies, got cable when it came out, etc. I was able to get along ok but always felt like an outsider.

I'm grateful now, since I appear to be immune to advertising and the constant desire to BUY. It seems that things are even tougher now, in school brand awareness is even worse than the jordache mentality I remember. Conspicuous consumption is even more demanding. I bet kids are treated like freaks if they don't have a cellphone and buy/eat/wear like everyone else does.

There are a lot of reasons I don't want kids, but a big one is not inflicting this on some innocent person. I'm not prepared to "sell out" in order to smooth a kid's experience, and it isn't fair to make them endure 18 years of abuse just because I'm not a good consumer.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[absorbr]

I really don't think that many people would take a drug that monkies with sleep patterns for it to make difference.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Zebedeu]

I believe it's the other way around.
Women started coming into the workforce more as the salaries of just the man became insufficient.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[ESR]

When once a single worker could bring in enough money to support himself, his spouse, and his 2.5 kids, now it is almost necessary for both parents to work to be able to make ends meet.

This is not capitalism's fault. Taxes have risen a lot since the 1960s, especially income-tax rates through bracket creep and mechanisms like the Alternative Minimum Income Tax. What actually happened is that the government 'adapted' to women workers by confiscating more of everybody's earnings. Thus, though real wages have gone up significantly, disposable income has changed much less.

That having been said, thread parent is probably correct about the treadmill effect of these drugs. It will happen with lawyers first...

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

I mean seriously, just how MUCH blood can you squeeze from a turnip?

With a suitable genetically engineered turnip, quite a bit! :)

Monsanto might be working on one right as we speak!

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[rgoldste]

I disagree, and I'll quote you a source: Elizabeth Warren, "The Two Income Trap" (Warren is a bankruptcy professor at Harvard Law School). Warren goes through the data and shows that your argument is false: families today do not spend more money on luxuries than in the 1950s, and the two cars come from needing both to get to work.

In fact, Warren argues that capitalism adapted just as the grandparent predicted: when some women went to work, some families had more disposable income. By and large, those families spent that income on buying houses in better school districts (which are of course more expensive). To compete with those families, and make sure Junior went to a good public school, all the other families had to send the wife to work to snag a house in the good school districts. Of course, that just spurred a bidding war for houses in good school districts, driving the prices up so much that the middle class family had to cut down on luxuries to afford the house in the good school district.

Moral of the story: if you create more wealth (whether by doubling the labor force, doubling the number of hours we work, or whathever), you cause inflation. It's not necessarily a zero-sum game, but it can be, as Warren demonstrates.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Anonymous Coward]

If a typical family lived in a 1200 square foot home, had one car, only the home phone, no cable/internet/cellphone, and didn't blow money on dining out and buying things they'd only need one income to do it.

That is my family. We get by on one income because my income is well above average (though well below median household income), and because we get cheap rent from my family, who own our 1200 square foot home.

I'm not sure that one average worker can support a 1950s lifestyle today. Housing costs are getting too high for that.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[James McGuigan]

While that may be true, the economic reality has also changed.

There are far less "job-for-life" type jobs in the manufacturing sector. Most manufacturing has shifted overseas (this money does not circulate back as wages), and jobs have become more service orientated coupled with more part time and "flexable" employment.

Prices that seek to be the absolute cheapest must cut corners and shift the hidden costs and risks to either the suppliers, employees or consumers. Outsourcing and just-in-time stockkeeping is a big part of this (we will make a fixed profit on the item, but you carry the risks if production screws up or demand is low and we can't sell all the stock).

Unionization and the cost/benifit analysis given to wages is pushed to the side with outsourcing. If we don't cut wages, then we won't get the next contract and everyone will be out of the job.

Look at a company like Nike, they design, advertise and and add a huge markup on the shoes they sell, but they don't really make them anymore - they buy their shoes from the same factories that make their competitiors shoes.

In the IT sector, at least in London, the market rates are high, especally for contracting work. But the price of housing are stupid... Rent is £1000 ($2000 USD) per month for a 1 bedroom flat in Central London is considered a good deal (and there is almost nothing under £800 even if you don't live in the very center).

Of course, there is one way to avoid the high cost of housing in London... don't live in a house (Did I happen to mention that I live on a boat... in Central London). :wq

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[geekoid]

That's the argument, but it is flawed.

the percentage of income a mortgage takes is higher, and longer then it used to be.
There is your big hit.

example:
My dad made 18,000 a year, his house cost 20,000. (I think 10 year loan, but I don't remember)

That very same house now cost 300k+. 15 times its original cost. The income for that same job is not 15 times what it was in 1970.

The ONLY expensive I have the my father didn't is broadband(15 dollars) and 2 WoW subscruptions(30) a month and a cell phone(25 dollars). Probably 10 bucks in 1970 money.
No cable, no additions to the phone, seldom go out.

The falacy that property value must rise is a large problem, as is 2 income families.
With 1 income the demand for workers goes up, as does the pay. With the added bebefit that one of the spouses will be home with the kids, and generaly in the neighborhood. Which makes a safer and healthier living enviroment.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[LunaticTippy]

Living on a boat, cool! I had a friend who lived in a boat in Santa Barbara because rent was so high. I heard they kept raising marina fees until he had to "move" to the next closest one.

You make good points. I lived in high-rent areas most of my life until I moved to Colorado. Rent has gone up a lot here, too, but at least it is possible to live comfortably for $1000/mo.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[LunaticTippy]

That is interesting, I will give it a read.

I am speaking from purely anecdotal personal experience, I realize not very scientific. I have a few friends that support a family comfortably on one income, complete with home ownership and many luxuries. True, they can't live in posh neighborhoods in a 4000 square foot house.

I'd sure like to see more of productivity gains make it to the workers. Oh well.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Anonymous Coward]

In the IT sector, at least in London, the market rates are high, especally for contracting work. But the price of housing are stupid... Rent is £1000 ($2000 USD) per month for a 1 bedroom flat in Central London is considered a good deal (and there is almost nothing under £800 even if you don't live in the very center).

Of course, there is one way to avoid the high cost of housing in London... don't live in a house (Did I happen to mention that I live on a boat... in Central London).

Most of the housing costs come from high land rents. So what's needed is higher density construction.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[LunaticTippy]

It's true that property values have gone crazy. I'm from California, so I know all about the 30k houses worth a million. I live in Colorado now, and have already seen houses go from 80k to 400k in just 12 years.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame Prop 13, which triggered a speculative boom (and consequent economic bust) by effectively exempting land rent from taxation. The years immediately after its passage saw a huge increase in CA land prices.

Untaxing land does nothing to reduce land speculation - in fact, it increases the burden on the real economy. This is a basic fact of economics which has been known for over 200 years, though the Japanese did not find out until the late '80s.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Steve525]

As the Grandparent points out, housing prices are what kills you. Pretty much everything else (cars, toys, eating out) has not increased at the rate of real estate. This is particularly true if you want to live near a city where there is no room to build any more, and if you want your kids to go to decent schools. A large home under these conditions isn't an option even if you have two incomes, unless you are very well off. Just ask anyone living in or near NY, Boston, or San Francisco or many other citys.

My own experience is that I make a lot more in real dollars than my father did, and yet, my house is much smaller. A large part of that may be due to the fact that I live near a city and I grew up way out in the suburbs. However, if you look at the older people in my neighborhood, it was strictly blue collar at one time. The people moving in today are all professionals, often with two incomes. There is no way the people who lived in my neighborhood 25 years ago could afford to move there today.

My wife also works, even though we probably could squeek by if she didn't and we didn't haven't to pay for daycare. Because she works, we can afford many luxuries I didn't have as a kid. We can afford nicer cars, clothes, eat out a lot, etc. However, buying a signficantly nicer house would be tough even with her additional income.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.

Disagree all you want, but you're still wrong.

You're comparing different lifestyles. The stay-at-home-mom generation had one small house, one car, and a couple of appliances. They ate out rarely, packed lunches, and had one telephone.

And they could achieve that on the income from one low-skilled worker. The average low-skilled worker today cannot provide even that lifestyle to a family on one income. Instead of the, say, $22 per hour that would take, he makes $14, if he's lucky.

If a typical family lived in a 1200 square foot home, had one car, only the home phone, no cable/internet/cellphone, and didn't blow money on dining out and buying things they'd only need one income to do it.

Nonsense. The median income for a family of four is about $44,000. $44,000 will provide the lifestyle you describe, barely. And it takes both parents working to achieve that for the vast majority of workers.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[FleaPlus]

I really don't think that many people would take a drug that monkies with sleep patterns for it to make difference.

Are you saying many people don't take caffeine?

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[sciguy125]

The true horror of this drug is that if it does become commonplace and people need less sleep, my bet is that capitalism will adapt itself to this new reality and we will soon be working 14-16 hour days.

Will soon be working 14-16 hour days? You obviously aren't an engineer.

Re:The Horror - Watch Capitalism Adapt

[pjp6259]

Maybe you can back that up? My (admittedly limited) research doesn't show that:
The top rate reached 91% during the war; this top rate remained in effect until 1964.

In 1964 the top rate was decreased to 70% (1964 Revenue Act), and then to 50% in 1981 (Economic Recovery Tax Act or ERTA).

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the top rate to 28%, at the same time raising the bottom rate from 11% to 15% (in fact 15% and 28% became the only two tax brackets).

During the 1990s the top rate rose again, standing at 39.6% by the end of the decade.

The top rate was cut to 35% and the bottom rate was cut to 10% by the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA).
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Uni ted_States)

What were you asleep?

[Usekh]

Welcome to 9 months ago, been napping have we?

There is some validity to that statement

[everphilski]

I tend to agree with you. However I find the same phenomenon occurs for me when I'm playing with my kids, playing Everquest, and reading articles that aren't in my field.

YAWN!!

[true_hacker]

I'm feeling Sleeepy.

Amphetamines & Narcolepsy

[MartinB]

There have been drugs around to do this for hundreds of years, at least. It's called speed.

Although I sense you jest, you're closer than you'd think as Speed is a standard pharmaceutical treatment for Narcolepsy.

drug the followers

[zogger]

Germans used amphetamines in ww2. It's not much of a secret that armies have used drugs since they became available. Originally all they had was booze and stuff like magic mushrooms (berserkers), but it's been going on a long time. The scary stuff to me is the reverse manchurian candidate stuff,the work to make drugs that make them lose all sense of right or wrong, just follow orders, no matter what the orders might be.....anything... then blank out the memories so they don't suffer remorse or PTSD type effects.

Re:drug the followers

[drinkypoo]

Germans used amphetamines in ww2.

I swear it's like you people are deliberately living in denial.

In WWII, the Germans and the US both used stimulants.

The US used Benzedrine (aka "Bennies") and the Germans used Methedrine (now called Methamphetamine.)

Re:drug the followers

[CableModemSniper]

He didn't say the US _didn't_ use drugs. What exactly is he in denial about? He said the germans used amphetmaines. You said the germans used meth-amphetamines. How does that put him in denial? He named the wrong drug by accident?

Re:drug the followers

[rtyall]

I can remember reading an article about mefloquine (AKA Lariam) in an old issue of Gear magazine. They used to give it to the soldiers in the Gulf War to prevent malaria, but the adverse effects from it included paranoia, hallucinations, mood swings, etc.
One soldier in particular, went completely crazy and beat a young boy to death, then killed himself. It was blamed on the Mefloquine.

Re:drug the followers

[zogger]

Well, I certainly would have said that if I had known it. Not living in denial, just never read about that, but the germans and bersererks I had. Now I do know, no reason to get nasty about it and stuff...! Most vets (combat styled) I know are from my generation so they are nam vets-they smoked a lot of pot and opium from what I hear.

Re:drug the followers

[myowntrueself]

and stuff like magic mushrooms (berserkers)

I can say, from personal experience, 'magic mushrooms' (in this case (berserkers) fly agaric (amanita muscaria)) would make a most excellent combat or survival drug.

I would not want to get into a confrontational situation while under their influence unless killing people would be OK. Seriously. They make you extremely happy to launch into physical activity. If someone tried to attack you, you would *joyfuly* attack them back. It would feel really great.

They also increase your endurance, speed and reaction times.

The affect does not wear off very rapidly and you can feel the effects for little under a week. You can sleep quite well too.

Oh and vomiting about an hour after ingesting them is *compulsory*. If for some reason you can't vomit, you are in big trouble.

Re:drug the followers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you may find that absolutly everyone used them in WW2. The germans and japanese used Meth, the americans and english used amphetamines (which are close to the same thing anyway). Oh, and when the Japanese surrendered, suddenly all their meth disappeared.... (to the US....)

Morphine was quite well used (read cryptonomicon for a start!) amongst troops....

the US STILL uses meth and amph's - there was a fighter pilot in Afganistan who got court marshalled 'cos he blew something up he shouldn't. Problem was, the airforce were giving him about 25mg of amphetamine before flying, then bringing him down after a 12+ hour sortie with various benzo's, then back up again after a "sleep" - rinse and repeat. No wonder he flipped out.

Of course, thats all pharmacutical stuff - so it's exactly 25mg of it, not maybe-something smoked in a pipe.... urgh....

Re:drug the followers

[zogger]

Most interesting. Are you more susceptible to "subtle persuasion" at the time as well?

Re:drug the followers

[myowntrueself]

I'm not sure, its hard to tell isn't it :)

Nature evolved A solution; others may be possible

[Sloppy]

Sleep has evolved for a purpose and a number of studies have shown that sleep is necessary

Lack of ability to fly or travel faster than 60 MPH and lack of ability to add a million numbers per second, also evolved for some good reasons (optimizing the use of limited resources), and it has also been showed that running slower than 60 MPH is necessary. But sometimes Mother Nature doesn't want what we want, and sometimes She isn't as smart as We are. Not to mention that we evolved in a different economy than what we currently live in.

I don't know if an alternative to sleep has been invented yet, but how can you possibly rule out that it could be done? Whatever sleep does (which you have already partially described) and how sleep does it, may eventually be fully understood. If/when that happens, there is no reason that engineers can't be turned loose on the problem, and come up with a way to do it better, just as we have learned how to travel better than walking.

Such is the "nature" of technology. ;-)

New Scientist is a rag

[Anonymous Coward]

New Scientist ... I'm dubious

Kinda goes without saying. If the New Scientist has published it, you can rest pretty much assured that its a load of sensationalist pseudo scientific crap.

Dreams..

[msimm]

Help my imagination, which in turn helps to enhance the quality of my life. We are wired to sleep, lets not take that too superficially.

I have used this stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a prescription for this stuff. What they don't tell you in the article are the side affects. Taking a half dose of this was like taking 3 cups of coffee. I was wired for several hours in an unpleasant way and found it very hard to concentrate and get work done. I couldn't imagine going through several days in that state if mind. People at work would think you were on drugs.

Re:I have used this stuff

[NiteShaed]

People at work would think you were on drugs.

Not an unreasonable assumption, given that you got into that state by taking drugs....

More time to play the Wii!

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome, so now I can play my Wii non-stop...

Everything old is new again

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's rather sad. One of the mantras from the 1950s and 1960s was "better living through chemicals" (which is funny, looking back, since this had nothing to do with the counter-culture of the time). But in the end, all it got us was a severely messed up environment.

I thought we'd learned this lesson back then; but apparently not. We thought the earth was indestructible back then - now some people think their bodies are indestructible.

"Ethics" and transhumanism

[Sloppy]

we are gaining the technology to enhance ourselves, and it will be a game of constant one-upmanship. Ethical discussions will prevent us from moving too fast..

"Ethical" discussions tend to take the ironic form of, "Hey, stop doing that. I get to say how you live."

..but I fear these concerns would have no impact on a slow progression towards turning ourselves into something unrecognizable as human by today's standards.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Ambien...

[msimm]

Whats really funny is how HUGE the sleep inducing drug industry is right now. But honestly, I don't see any reasonable non-scheduled uses for this kind of drug. I can't imagine even the FDA would be comfortable allowing otc access to a drug that will allow people to potentially drive cars and operate heavy machinery without having had a sound rem state. This looks like a useful development for military and other critical applications not so much something for Joe-Bob down the road.

From a meth addict's perspective

[halo1982]

I'm 24 now and has been prescribed amphetamines and various stimulants since I was six years old due to ADHD. First Ritalin, then as a teen I moved onto adderall, and then about two years ago I discovered this wonderful (italics for emphasis on sarcasm) drug called methamphetamine. I thought it was great, I could go 48-72 hours programming and get more work than I ever thought possible done and then crash for 8 hours, repeat. This wears on you after a few weeks and I'd start sleeping 14 hours, then 24, etc. Eventually I just kinda went crazy, lost my job, etc. At first I don't think it was the euphoria the drug induces that made it so hard to quit, it was the productivity it induced. I became addicted to getting 6 days of work done in 2, and then it all kind of went down hill from there. I've been clean 277 days and half of the time thats just because I cut off contact with all the people I could get it from. This is not something you want to mess with. While I think "meth is bad" is pretty universal, you would be surprised how many software developers I bought/sold to for the exact same reason as I. And I live in a smaller city, I'd think this would be much more rampant in major areas such as LA, New York, Seattle.
Anyway the article this drug is about is Modafinil, also known as Provigil, a narcolepsy drug, which I've been prescribed for ADHD. And it does the same damn thing. Your body needs sleep, trust me I know, no matter what it is after two or three days your mind begins to break down. This drug certainly doesn't help with that, and if you RTFA (what are the chances of that?) the software developer in question mentions some of the things I pointed out. This worries me, greatly, because after going through a year of hell I'm now seeing articles like this discussing the potential for a "sleep-free" lifestyle, I have very little doubt in my mind that such a thing is not possible without great damage to the brain.

I am not everyman and I do have an extremely addictive personality, but I've seen friends who don't (have addictive personalities) fall into the same trap as I did under the allusion of "work more, work faster, sleep is for wimps!"
Anyway this is just my experience, but I thought I would share...

Re:From a meth addict's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

ADHD is a myth.

Re:From a meth addict's perspective

[HappySqurriel]

ADHD is a myth.

ADHD is way over diagnosed, and drugs are over prescribed, but that doesn't mean that there aren't people who have ADHD.

Its a well known fact that most children with "ADHD" can be effectively treated by changing their diet, adding structure to their life and ensuring they get a good night's sleep. There are children that (regardless of how you change their lifestyle) do not respond to other forms of treatment for "ADHD", in this case the children probably do have a condition that could be refered to as ADHD; the question is, is this actually a problem?

We consider "ADHD" a problem because our (Western Society) school system is largely based on the Socratic method of learning (lectures); another way of teaching could (possibly) have better results in dealing with children who have ADHD.

Re:From a meth addict's perspective

[furry_marmot]

Couple of things I thought I'd share. First, I've seen several of these articles, and I've also used modafinil on and off for almost three years. Sleep-free is an exaggeration. It can make a significant difference, but it does have side-effects (mostly headache and nausea) and it's not like your performance is quite normal, though it depends on what you're doing.

For example, I've found that when I'm trapped at my desk and have to pull an all-nighter, it just doesn't keep me up all night. I think it's because of the lack of general physical movement. For all night sessions, I find working as late as I can (1am or 2am, usually), followed by 2-4 hours of sleep, gives me far more energy for the task than trying to get by with caffeine alone. And I'm far more productive than trying to push through without sleep at all. But your reasoning will get fuzzy, your memory will play tricks on you, and you can get kind of distracted after a while. The longest I stayed up with it was 38 hours straight. At the end of that time, I knew I was in a pretty bad place. I had a glass of wine, faded fast, and hopped into bed. I woke after 5 1/2 hours fairly refreshed. I was kind of out of it the next day, and I wouldn't want to make any important decisions or presentations in that state, but it wasn't bad.

Recently, we decided to remodel the kitchen. We were running behind schedule (who doesn't), I was burning the candle at both ends because of work, and I needed to get part of the plumbing done to get the cabinets in place for the Corian people who were coming in two days. I used a half dose around dinner time and kept going with good energy until 3am. At that point I could have taken more and kept going, but I slept and finished the next night. An important point to note is that Modafinil/Provigil can stave off the urge to sleep, but cannot eliminate the need to sleep.

When I was young and stupid, I would indulge in a variety of drugs for no particular reason. Meth (and I presume the somewhat more legal varieties of amphetamine) are good for focus and staying awake, but along with not eliminating the need for sleep, they also make subtle changes to your brain chemistry. My brother got hooked on meth, took it all the time, thought he was real cool. Then he started talking about "the mob" wanting to kill him, and how every dark sedan he'd see on the road was the FBI keeping an eye on him. When I, my other brother, and some of his friends tried to convince him to get off the drugs, he thought it was some kind of plot. He finally got sent home on a forced vacation and laid off the drugs for a while. It was about 2 weeks before he started questioning his delusions.

It may sound like a joke, but amphetamine psychosis due to chronic use really isn't. It wears off after a couple of weeks, but while you're in it, you're particular form of crazy (my brother became obviously and overtly paranoid) will be absolutely indistinguishable from the real thing (that is, organic and not going away).

Anyway (sorry if I got off-topic), Modafinil definitely does not have these side effects. And it won't leave you burned out or sleeping 24 hours, but prolonged lack of sleep definitely is not good for your brain and you will find yourself misplacing IQ points after a while.

--marmot

Re:From a meth addict's perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

you spineless wimp. you found out about meth two years ago and in that time became and addict AND cleaned up your act for the better part of a year? for fucks sake man, learn some restraint! I've been using meth recreationally since 2001, it's not the terrible drug you make it out to be. it's just a few fuckwits like yourself with no self control who go crazy on it then tell everyone how bad it is. overindulgence of anything is bad. are you going to go on a binge drinking nothing but coke for two years, have all your teeth fall out then crusade that people ban coke because "it" wrecked your teeth? disregarding that fact that YOU wrecked them? self control and a little responsibility, that what you fuckheads need

I picked a bad day to quit VicodinOh well

[homey of my owney]

Looks like I picked a bad day to quit Vicodin

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I fear the day where it's "uncool" to not stick some drug in you as part of your daily routine in order to get through the day"

You mean like coffee?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a number of people who don't consume caffeine, and I've yet to hear anyone call them "uncool" because of this.

One is my wife, who years ago learned that she was overly sensitive to caffeine, so she just avoids it. OTOH, she sees me drink a cup of coffee and then go off and take a nap. I once explained that it's because I'm just an insensitive male, and she agreed that that must be the explanation.

Her main complaint is that she can't eat chocolate with getting a strong reaction, and she loves chocolate. But she has learned to avoid it. This is difficult in restaurants, where most desserts contain chocolate.

--
If I'd asked the customers what they wanted, they would have said "A faster horse." -- Henry Ford

The candle that burns the brightest...

[siegesama]

So what, you want to burn double bright for 66 years and you think you'll be in any condition to keep going on at all for another 33?

There are a lot of stresses you can put on your body, or important things you can leave out in order to make it seem like you've got more time right now. But I'm going to wager that most or all of them are going to be trimming time off of the end, either due to increased stress or decreased levels of health and fitness. Or maybe it's not your body that you'll burn out, maybe it'll be your brain. Maybe you can make it through 66 going like that, but then will you be a vegetable for the rest of it?

Personally, I'd rather have the opposite: I'd increase my daily downtime if it meant increasing my functional lifespan. Sleep twelve hours a day and have a functional (non-wheelchair-drooling) 100 years rather than 80? Heck yes, someone invent that!

I think the balance right now of sleep is pretty good, and making advances in health-care for mind and body longevity are worth more than pills that allow you to stress-out for longer linear periods of time. However with that said, there's room in science for both, so maybe we'll get lucky and you'll get your pills and I'll get mine, and we can both gain some further control over the extent of our lives

And finally: I like sleep. Sleep is comfortable, and warm, and nice. It's often got nice dreams and little insights and ideas.

Polyphasic/"Uberman" sleeping

[SlightlyMadman]

What's interesting about this drug, is that it seems to do something very similar to what people have been doing with polyphasic sleeping for years now. Basically, you only "need" 2 hours of sleep, but it has to be almost 100% REM. If you can trick your body into denying itself all the rest of the "unnecessary" sleep cycles, you can get by with just those two.

Polyphasic sleeping accomplishes this by limiting yourself to brief 15-20 minute naps, which are far more efficient than sleeping in large blocks because the brain can be trained to go directly into REM. Unfortunately, this training can take weeks or months (depending on how fastidious you are with your schedule), and the adjustment period can be extremely unpleasant.

A drug like this could be very useful for those of us who do don't experience much physical exertion and sleep very little as it is anyways, but couldn't get past the adjustment hump of the polyphasic cycle.

Re:Polyphasic/"Uberman" sleeping

[nappingcracker]

Polyphasic sleep is great, but /very/ difficult to maintain. It is most effective when a sleep schedule is followed very routinely, and that is more difficult than you would think. I was an insomniac, and to stave off crazyness started a polyphasic sleep routine. I already had a pretty short "time to REM" cycle, dreaming vividly during cat naps, so that was easy for me. Keeping the schedule was really hard though, especially if you have a real life. Its OK if you are holed up working on your master plan, or are a recluce or whatever, but forget it if you want relationships, spontaneity, or a nightlife.

I still function pretty well on little to no sleep a few days a week, without much "catch up" time, but found random catnaps to be almost as good as a polyphasic sleep schedule. Especially at work, when I get stumped, go out to my car, take a 20 min nap, solve the problem while I sleep!

Re:Polyphasic/"Uberman" sleeping

[ronjeremy8a]

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Re:Polyphasic/"Uberman" sleeping

[spamchang]

I know a guy who tried this out in college. He went nuts after a while and gave it up. Maybe you can maintain this if you live away from society, but as long as you have to do things with normal people, you're not going to be able to entirely live on the Uberman sleep schedule. I don't believe that there AREN'T negative side effects to this anyway...if you believe in evolution, you have to think that it's better to stick with what's come out of the millions of years of natural selection.

Re:Polyphasic/"Uberman" sleeping

[ross.w]

My Grandfather had this ability to fall asleep for short periods when there was not much happening, but would wake and be fully alert if called upon to do so.

I was told he learned to do this in the trenches at Gallipoli. You can see how this ability would be useful in a situation like that. In fact you wouldn't have much choice. Funny how it stayed with him for the rest of his life long after he finished needing it.

You're right

[LunaticTippy]

Most people grow when they sleep. Then, their vertebrae compress during the day and they go to bed shorter. While horozontal the discs uncompress, resulting in "growth." Astronauts get about 2 inches taller in low gravity, but for us earthbound folk it is less, maybe 1-2 cm. Here is a link I found.

Re: REM

[TaoPhoenix]

I am aware that training can partially alter/accelerate the onset of the strong REM periods, but it's certainly not a switch. My rough experiments let me drop the time required from 8 hours to 5, but ever since my teens I knew going below 5 hours is trouble, and only for horrible emergencies. "Hmm. Turn in that term paper. Nothing afterwards matters".

Parent Post is right on the money that you can increase *production*, where you draw upon previously built/integrated faculties, but over a long term, new deep learning or creativity will take a hit. The problem is that production is over-rewarded in today's society. I have worked hard to promote sustainability at work. I feel some of these options encourage the impulses of less disciplined managers to engage in pseudo-exciting last minute heroics.

Fatal Familial Insomnia

[xantho]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomn ia

I just listened to the Science Friday podcast with D.T. Max, who did a lot of investigations on Fatal Familial Insomnia, which sounds like it would be pretty devastating. Basically, one of the proteins mutates into a prion, which seems to convince other instances of the protein in the body to mutate as well. Eventually, the victim is totally unable to sleep and dies from exhaustion after 9 months or so.

The bitch of it is, the disease doesn't strike until the victim is in their 50's or so, making it pretty likely that the victim will have reproduced, which, according to that Wikipedia article, makes the offspring about 50% likely to catch whatever gene makes that happen. A lot of really terrible genetically transmitted diseases kill their victim at younger ages, so there's less of a chance that the victim has passed the disease on to their children, because they're less likely to have children at that age. But this thing lies dormant until later in life, which is why the one Italian family has such a family hstory of it. They keep on passing it on to their children.

Three days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brain damage occurs after more than three days without sleep. Which explains much of the effect that the military has on its participants.

Two to three weeks of sleep deprivation is fatal in rats.

"Drugs Eradicate the Need for Sleep" = Typical New Scientist sensationalist bullshit.

Society worries me more

[msobkow]

The idea that someone has to take such a drug in order to perform their duties says a lot about the state of society, employee relations, and the treatment of contractors like robotic systems.

And none of what it says is "good".

Elm St?

[dlim]

Odd, my manager just got a resume from a strange applicant for a new 24/7 support position. No prior experience. Apparently, he's changing careers.

I NEED sleep!

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, I'm a slashdotter... the only time I get laid is IN MY DREAMS!

The body does not have a 24-hour sleep wake cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans, without a clock, visual cues such as the sun, etc. will adopt a 25-hour sleep wake cycle. Just wanted to point that out becuase the article suggests the body naturally has a 24 hour sleep wake cycle. That would seem appropriate given our 24 days here on Earth. But that's not the case.

Other bodily processes

[SteveFoerster]

To all you guys saying we shouldn't tinker with natural processes, does that mean you also don't like it when women use the pill to only have periods every few months?

Consider this...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have many *theories* about evolution and development, but the *truth* is that we just don't know for sure how it works. We have proven facets of genetic and environmental development through science, but we cannot even begin to imagine how it all ties together because our consciousness is not broad and open enough to do so. Every decade, our own scientists prove that scientists of 10 years ago understood only 10% of what they were sure they knew, and that understanding was tenuous at best. How does anyone know that our next evolutionary step is not supposed to be initiated consciously by us? For that matter, how do we know that other organisms have not perpetrated their own evolutionary adjustments? Is it entirely impossible that the giraffe did not somehow lengthen its own neck in order to be able to reach the taller branches? Is it completely inconceivable to consider that an ordinary squirrel did not gnaw it's own flesh into the form of webbing at its sides in order to be able to glide between tree branches to avoid predators and stalk acorns?

On a side note, someone prove to me that God and evolution cannot work hand in hand. That a being who is intelligent enough to create everything we know and so much more that we do not is somehow completely unable to plan for the need for organisms to adapt to their surroundings. There is no such thing as mutual exclusivity in our universe and it is ignorant to argue that evolution disproves creationism or vice versa. Any agent of either side of that argument who argues that one argument unequivocally disproves the other has not been paying attention to nature, the universe, life or... well, anything really.

Let's open our eyes to the *fact* that we remain steadfastly narrow-minded, even when we are sure that we are open to anything. We think our knowledge is king, but do you think primitive cultures realized they were as uninformed and ignorant as we know them to be compared to our vast collectives of knowledge and information? Do we know how uninformed and ignorant we are compared to what will come in the future? I think not, but let's keep quoting from our textbooks and thinking that is all there is to know.

Diagnosed as a narcoleptic online?

[ionFreeman]

Can I go get diagnosed with various diseases and get prescriptions without going to the doctor? Where?

Wonderful for Very Specific Uses

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there's a big problem using this drug to not feel sleepy for days on end. However, there are great short-term uses for which I'd pay quite a bit for this drug. Mostly things I already do and the sleepyness either makes dangerous or difficult. For example:

• late night driving
• emergency break/fix response for business critical applications

And, for good or ill, I can see it being allowed on a limited basis for many jobs that have regulations that restrict hours per day on the job or are just plain dangerous to do while sleepy. For example:

• airline pilot
• air traffic controller
• long-haul trucker
• heavy equipment operator
• circumcision technician ;)

Like any drug...useful when used properly and dangerous when abused.

"16 hours to catch up" = false

[Anonymous Coward]

"Normally, if you stayed awake for 48 hours straight you would have to sleep for about 16 hours to catch up."

False. The average adult only needs a full 8 hours of rest to "catch up", regardless of how long the person has been awake, whether a day or a week.

It's one of the miracles of sleep; the human body only needs a contiguous 8 hours. For children it can be more and for seniors slightly less.

Re:"16 hours to catch up" = false

[Scatterplot]

Or true... I typically cannot sleep 8 hours a day for a long period of time and function. I need my Saturdays- left on a truly free schedule I will sleep for 12 hors a day. Inconvenient, but it's sorta what I end up doing. I also will shift my cycle about an hour a day, eventually settling on a 4am-4pm schedule. I don't enjoy that, mind you- but it's what ends up happening. With stuff to regulate me, like classes, etc. that will sorta work out, but I'm tired a lot. Very annoying- lookup DSPS, delayed sleep phase syndrome, and if you need to, hypersomnia, the aforementioned need for more than 8-9 hours of sleep a night.

Need for sleep

[dargaud]

I read a paper in computational theory that went more or less like this. They proved via lambda calculus (the base maths of computational theory) that any sufficiently complex system needs a 'cleanup function'. In practical computer terms, it's the infamous garbage disposal process where lost pointers are dropped, unused pages are flushed from memory, seldom used memory commited to long term storage (mem to cache, cache to disk, disk to tape, etc...), data reorganised (in databases) or compressed, etc... During this period few, if any, real computing activity can continue; this translates as "if you don't reboot regularly, your computer will crash or you need a good garbage disposal process which will slow down your system for a while".

Now if you believe (like many) that the brain is no more than a big computing unit, then it must abides by those rules and the sleep is nothing else than the physical manifestation of 'garbage disposal'. Keep it up for too long and it will... crash.

Re:Need for sleep

[lukesl]

I think that's close, but not quite correct. The main theories I've seen in the computational neuroscience literature are that sleep is required for memory consolidation. Since memories are stored by changing the synaptic weights between neurons, you need to be able to send a signal for which synaptic weights to change by how much. However, if you try to do that when the organism is awake, the signal for synaptic changes can't be separated from normal activity, so the system has to be "taken offline" for that to occur. A better analogy would be that your brain is doing a hardware upgrade every night, while you sleep.

Re:Need for sleep

[kraut]

> Now if you believe (like many) that the brain is no more than a big computing unit, then it must abides by those rules and the sleep is nothing else > than the physical manifestation of 'garbage disposal'. Keep it up for too long and it will... crash.

My brain may be a computer, but it sure as hell doesn't run Windows ;)

Re:Need for sleep

[bergeron76]

So if the brain stays up for too long, what do you define as the "crash"?

Crash could be defined as:
-a nap
-psychosis
-death
-spontaneous combustion (?)

Re:Need for sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's why we need a change in Congress every now and then.

Re:Need for sleep

[mrchaotica]

However, if you try to do that when the organism is awake, the signal for synaptic changes can't be separated from normal activity, so the system has to be "taken offline" for that to occur.

That theory would also explain why normal people dream, as well as why insomniacs hallucinate.

Re: Need for sleep

[gidds]

Hmmm. My best guess is more to do with neural nets. IIRC, they seem to benefit from frequent 'training periods'; in an undirected-learning mode, you send them random inputs and it helps them make new patterns and consolidate the ones they have.

Sounds suspiciously like dreaming to me.

Re:Need for sleep

[lukesl]

Exactly. There is also plenty of evidence for memory consolidation during sleep, and more recently, there was a study showing that sleep is when your brain processes what you learned and draws abstractions from it.

Re:Need for sleep

[mink]

From experience due to having over 400 "events" a night that prevented me from getting more then 120 solid seconds of REM stage sleep. I can say that it starts out with getting sleepy easily (the motion of driving for about 10 minutes) and progresses into things like auditory hallucinations, your mind jumping tracks and going off on a random tangent instead of what you were trying to communicate, all the sudden you are talking crazy stuff and not what you were intending to say. Next is instant sleep, you would drop off like someone has flipped a switch BANG! you end up in the middle of a dream.

After the sleep study and getting a CPAP machine to sleep with, I no longer have any of that happen to me.

I think I would be dead due to falling asleep driving or from long term oxygen deprivation. While I "slept" my blood oxygen count was supposedly dangerously low. I suspect this has affected my memory and a few other things, since brain damage is linked to chronic low oxygen.

I still sometimes do not get enough sleep due to life and I have no idea how badly I am in sleep deficit or how long until I am truly caught up.

Drugs Eradicate the Need for Sleep ?

[spx]

Isnt that like ... speed? Thought we already had that around...O me, with my no reality per Bill O Reily...

i've been waiting for that

[bmannaa]

i have been waiting for that for long years. this will save 1/4 of humans age wasted on sleeping.

Speed

[FridayBob]

A long time ago I knew a guy who was into amphetamines.
His habit intensified and one day he figured he didn't
have to sleep anymore, so he sold his bed (probably to
buy more speed). Unfortunately, he collapsed several
days later and ended up looking for a new one. Bummer.
(this is a true story, too.)

Re:Not good..... Bad definition

[InterGuru]

"Eukaryotes don't sleep"

Eukaryotes are organisms with complex cells containing nucleii -- roughly everything except bacteria and viruses. That is both yeast and elephants are eukaryotes. See the Wikipedia definition.

Some of them, such as humans, do sleep. Perhaps the writer meant mammals or vertebrates.

Sleep and Life Expectancy

[Ledgem]

"Long term effects" sums up my concern precisely. It also reminds me of an interesting study that I heard given by a researcher in Japan.

He had studied sleep, and I'll admit that I found his presentation somewhat questionable - it seemed a bit too basic. However, what I took away from the presentation was a graph that he presented. It showed average lifespan vs. average number of hours of sleep received per night. People with 5 hours or less had the lowest life expectancy. Life expectancy increased pretty drastically up until an average of 8 or 9 hours; beyond that, life expectancy began to sag, but not all that quickly. I don't remember the age values - sorry to those who'd be interested.

I question how one could get accurate data for such a graph, but that's a different issue. If there's even a bit of truth to this, it may have enormous implications for something like this. To be honest, I've dreamt (ha) of creating something like this - where a person can either avoid sleep or they can receive the effects of a full night's sleep in a few minutes, even seconds. I always figured that if something like that were to be created, the frequency with which a person should be allowed to use the technology should be strictly limited.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with this.

Sleep Eradicates The Need For Drugs

[WillAffleckUW]

While medications can be used to alter some aspects of sleep, in the real world, you're far better off getting more sleep and taking less drugs.

Except for caffeine and chocolate. Those are good, yum!

It's probably already been said but..

[jjn1056]

I actually enjoy sleep. I've learned some very important things from my dreams, and I belive my dream life is just an extension of my waking life. Yes, just like waking life you might not recall the details, but the bright flashes endure. I also find the more you respect dreaming then more you start to remember of it. My wife and I often discuss our dreams together, which has been a nice part of our relationship.

I certainly don't feel like it's 1/3 of my life where I am doing nothing.

Then again, some people waste the other 2/3 doing little or nothing as well.

Life is what you make of it.

That said, I can certainly see the benefits of using a drug like this for particular needs, such as when I'm on a heavy development cycle and feeling really productive. The truth is some days I am much more productive than others and on those days I'd prefer to stay up until I've exhausted what I am working on. Then I can go back to normal sleep on days when I am just getting by with work.

nootropics

[Anonymous Coward]

I use nootropic drugs like piracetam and DMAE. They are great for improving mental functioning, but do not abolish the need for sleep in the same way as modafinil (provigil); however, they can help you function better whenever you are short on sleep. Also, unlikely modafinil, they can be obtained without a prescription. I'd recommend experimenting with nootropics and adjusting your schedule to get more sleep before using modafinil. I have considered using it myself, but it is necessary for me to maintain a low blood pressure due to marfan's syndrome so I think it would be unwise for me to take modafinil nor would any doctor aware of my condition prescribe it.

Long term

[Anonymous Coward]

About two years ago I started feeling tired often, had sleep studies etc, and ended up sleeping 10-12 hrs a day plus needing one or two 1.5 hr naps a day just to get by. I was a zombie. I've been taking a combination of Modafinil and Amantadine, which seem to have a synergistic effect on my symptoms (either alone barely take the edge off), for 11 months now. Modafinil alone for more like 18 months. We've run out of ideas what is truly 'wrong' with me, so I look forward to other similar medications. I can now sleep 8 hrs and feel like I got 7 hours of sleep.

When I first heard about this drug, there was a lot of discussion over who should be eligible. It's surely people with medical issues, but "wouldn't this drug be better than pep pills for doctors, truck drivers, etc?" Then "what about the attorney who is working on a life and death case? What about cramming students?" Where to draw the line? Should there be a line? I'm grateful just to be conscious and am unlikely to abuse it since I view it as medicine, but I appreciate the need to discover "what happens when people purposely take more than recommended dosages/stay up for 96 hrs 'because they can?'"

That's not to say, 'adults need a baby sitter over what recreational substances they take,' but (for CYA liability for the company/doctor/ drugstore that makes/distributes at minimum) when you mess with the brain (see numerous books on serotonin reuptake inhibitors) there is a real need to find what's going on before it's an issue.

My Docs have warned me that the medications I'm taking may cease to work well -- if your body says, "I think your dopamine levels should be (low) Here, and you take medications to put you back to normal, your body may compensate over time by making *even* lower amounts [homeostasis setpoints] Thus folk without a medical condition, who use it to stay awake past 'normal' times, may find they always feel better on the drug in the long run (psychological want, not addiction). Just getting some sleep and not taking the drug would reset things, in theory.

AC

Is REM sleep a mystic phenomenon?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how..

I don't see how, either. The question is: are you sure that nobody can ever see how? Is REM sleep a mystic phenomenon that will never be understandable through chemistry? Is REM sleep a supernatural process that can't be accidently manipulated or synthesized through the clumsy, almost random discoveries of our "modern" pharmaceutical industry?

If sleep is supernatural, then yeah, of course you don't see how. Nobody ever will. Leave sleep a topic for the witch doctors and the hippies and the church sermons.

X-Files?

[Shoikana]

Wasn't there an X-Files episode about this?

Gotta go with....no.

[biggomez777]

Being bipolar, when my medication doesn't work I can go for days without sleep. This is not good. The brain starts doing strange things after day 3 or so. I can only imagine what would happen WHEN, not IF, people start abusing something like this. Sleep is incredibly important to anyone with an illness of any kind, be it physical or mental. Without it, the condition worsens.
Imagine what would happen if this became commonplace. There's a reason that they don't give anti-depressants to make everyone happy. In a small % of the population it can/will cause a psychotic episode. Severe sleep deprivation can do the same thing, set off things in the brain that a person only had a tendency for before. Your great grand-mother was a paranoid schizophrenic? Great, now that you decided to cram for a test for 3 days, you set it off. The chances are low, granted, but do you really want to play with something like that? Get your 8 hours and be happy that you can.

Chrono Trigger

[jrmiller84]

Wow, this reminds me of the Enertron from Chrono Trigger in a drug form. "You feel rested! But you're still hungry."

Budget

[Anonymous Coward]

When both spouses understand the effect that buying all this crap has on their finances they might be less likely to insist on all this stuff.

I wonder if the obscurer Simpsons references...

[attemptedgoalie]

I wonder if the obscurer Simpsons references will ever get old.

If I could get away with decapitating the idiots who keep bringing up the overlord remark, I'd do it today.

Re:I wonder if the obscurer Simpsons references...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Not until Homer pulls a Kramer.

Related Book Recommendation

[landonf]

On the subject of not sleeping, I read a fantastic book by Nancy Kress entitled "Beggars in Spain". It's a Hugo and Nebula award winning book, and I'd highly recommend it. If you'll excuse the back cover quote:

In a world where the slightest edge can mean the difference between success and failure, Leisha Camden is beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent ... and one of an ever-growing number of human beings who have been genetically modified to never require sleep. Once considered interesting anomalies, now Leisha and the other "Sleepless" are outcasts -- victims of blind hatred, political repression, and shocking mob violence meant to drive them from human society ... and, ultimately, from Earth itself. But Leisha Camden has chosen to remain behind in a world that envies and fears her "gift" -- a world marked for destruction in a devastating conspiracy of freedom ... and revenge.

The obvious joke...

[cgicw]

Does this make Yves - *holds pinky to lip* - "Sleepless in Seattle" ?

The bunnies are plotting against me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I did 8 days awake once (with nothing stronger than moderate quantities of Red Bull, a little booze, some really nice fried breakfasts and cups of tea, and a lot of distraction, parties, and sheer bloody-minded determination).

It was a sort of experiment; I was the control, and a friend was the "experiment", who did the same 8 days awake, but "aided" by dropping a 100mg-150mg pill of methylenedioxymethamphetamine phosphate (pretty good ecstasy) every time the previous pill wore off (and, of course, remaining appropriately hydrated - I don't remember how many he got through, but it was definitely over 50 in total, and looking back, I find it amazing he didn't die - by the end, they weren't having any effect except monging him out and despite frankly loving the drug, he couldn't bear touching it for the next 6 months afterwards - "too much of a good thing").

Of the two of us, I think I actually got the weirder experience. Sleep deprivation is fucked up.

I could feel myself lapse slightly after a couple of days, and really didn't know what day it was after about 2 and a half. 3 days in, I swear the rabbits that were native to the university campus (for where else do you conduct such crazy experiments?) were plotting against me.

I've done drugs since then, and I would really equate sleep deprivation to magic mushrooms in terms of the sheer depth of hallucinations - we're talking some deeply weird, very convincing stuff here. Fortunately I've always been aware that I was hallucinating because I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into - so it didn't actually turn my mind into slushie (permanently).

I needed about 1 and a half days' sleep afterwards, by the way, and woke up pretty groggy but triumphant, ate a little, played a few games to wind down again, went back to sleep for another half day, then I was pretty much back to normal.

(Posting anonymously, for obvious reasons, but this really happened (in 2001). I am not as insane as I used to be, but, as many do, had a wild experimental phase in university. Do not try this at home. You might die.)

Re:The bunnies are plotting against me!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

I swear the rabbits that were native to the university campus (for where else do you conduct such crazy experiments?) were plotting against me.

Everyone knows that it is cats, not rabbits, which plot against people. :)

mod this guy up

[compro01]

interesting reasoning.

could cause a dangerous shift in work attitudes

[xis23]

recall that cocaine was given to black slaves to make them work harder, longer and with less stress. also think of the influence of caffiene in establishing and helping to make possible the current 50+ hour working weeks taken on by many. if this is a middle class drug (thereby acceptable), and has profit potential for employers, it is likely to be abused particularly in extending things like shift work. bad news.

we only need 4.5 hours sleep anyways

[spectro]

There is a study where they isolated a group of people for several days with no way of knowing the time. They ended up sleeping 4.5 hours. I cannot find any references on the web so I can't confirm it.

eyes

[Loconut1389]

even if I'm not tired, my eyes sometimes are- does this medicine help that?

Re:eyes

[mcoletti]

It may be that you just need to have your eyes checked. A new set of glasses might set you aright.

Re:eyes

[Vegeta99]

Not only that, but we're really not made to focus on phosphor dots 10" from our head. If you're in front of a monitor all day, try a reduced resolution, and make sure to get up and make a lap around the cubes every hour or so. Even looking up at the ceiling for a minute or so every 10 minutes can help.

NO! ADHD is not a myth!

[ebers]

My brother is brilliant but couldn't concentrate on a book long enough to read 15 pages of it. Writing was similarly impossible. He figured he was a lazy and disorganized, and just couldn't concentrate due to insufficient moral fiber. So, despite being brilliant, he counted himself out of any kind of intelectually rewarding career. Then he learned about ADHD and tried some medication. It was like throwing a switch- now he can concentrate and work hard, and he does. ADHD meds made it possible for him to thrive at law school, where so much counselling, introspection, self-blame, and "lifestyle changes" did nothing.

Overdiagnosed as ADHD is, there are lots of cases out there like my brother's, and you cannot dismiss the reality of ADHD without considering them.

Pills?, we don't need no stinking pills

[spectro]

sleeping pills don't work, they put you in delta and your brain needs to cycle through alpha, theta and delta during your sleep. Neither you need pills to stay awake. You can take a mind training course where they will teach you how to go sleep or stay awake.

<slashvertisement type="warning">
Since I took the Silva Method course (http://www.silvamethod.com) I can go sleep anywhere anytime, I have even experimented taking an espresso right before going to sleep. There is a technique to program your mind to wake you up at a specific time fully refreshed, even if you sleep only 3-4 hours and another to keep you awake if you feel sleepy. I don't drink coffee to stay awake anymore, I drink it because I like the taste.
</slashvertisement>

Ludicrously misleading title

[mfender9]

I got really excited when I read that. I have always said that if someone invents a drug I can take which means I don't *need* to sleep, I would be the happiest guy alive. Then I find out they're just talking about modafinil (a.k.a. Provigil) and other similar drugs.

I've taken modafinil on and off for years. It in no way eradicates the *need* for sleep, it just stops you feeling sleepy when you want to be awake and concentrating during the course of a normal day. But you still have to sleep, or your brain turns to porridge.

Nothing to see here.

Suicide, Mass Murder

[stankulp]

When will we be treated to 24/7 news coverage of the first mass-shooting/suicide committed by a modafinil-popping perp?

Oh, I forgot. The MSM won't mention the modafinil part, for fear of being sued by the "ethical" pharmaceutical industry.

Only one purpose for it...

[aspears]

My friend and I talked about this on the Ben Nation Podcast back in Feb. or March. Initially, I thought it was an excellent idea, because life is short, why waste 1/3 of it sleeping?

Then I realized... the only real reason to develop this drug would be to benefit the economy. It's ALWAYS about the economy. It might not ever become mandatory, but there will always be people willing to use the drug to be a better worker bee. And those 24/7 workers will be the ones everybody has to compete with for jobs and/or promotions. Maybe employers will even go as far as secretly (or openly) screening for it during drug tests?

Re:Polyphasic - doing that now

[Migraineman]

Interesting coincidence - I'm on day 10+ of a polyphasic sleep cycle. I learned this technique in college, and it's quite effective. You'll need to train yourself to make it work, and that may take some substantial effort. Like any skill, practice makes it work better. On the down side, there are repurcussions of adopting a non-circadian sleep cycle. You'll lose a sense of time - there isn't a clear demarcation between "days" anymore. Eating becomes an issue too. Your body has been trained to have 3 meals a day (nominally,) and the polyphasic cycle doesn't allow that to happen. You'll need to pay more attention to how and when you eat - more small meals is better. Expect constipation or diahre... dihar ... the squirts for a few days while your body adjusts.

In the past 10 days, I've had less than 2 hours of continuous sleep per day. I aim for a 15-minute "power nap" every four hours, and then try to schedule a 2-hour REM session between 3am and 5am. Adherence to the nap schedule is essential.

Why would I do this to myself? Medical issues with the wife have forced me to adopt *all* of the domestic responsibilites as well as the day-job stuff. I've been dealt the choice between a pile of crap and a turd sandwich. The "warm fuzzy hugs ideal situation" option isn't on the table. I'm doing detailed engineering work, and my attention span and coherency are operating at 90+% of usual. The only thing I'm not capable of doing right now is the marathon 8-hour design session.

That said, I can't say I'm a big fan of the chemical solution. You can do this yourself without the need for Big Pharma's involvement.

Wages didn't fall, taxes increased.

[Banner]

Really, wages did not fall; taxes increased. Look at the tax load these days (~30 percent) and the tax load then. Also look at how much more people buy these days versus those days.

But if you had a sudden wage increase of what you pay in taxes, you could easily afford to not have both people work.

Re:Wages didn't fall, taxes increased.

[sloth jr]

Without getting all McLaughlin Group on you, http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes /ustax.shtml

Maximum tax in 1954 was 87% of income (this number is shockingly gross).

Reduced taxes would of course leave you more money. Being able to buy a car for $2000 certainly helped as well, or a new house for $18,000.

Re:Wages didn't fall, taxes increased.

[Banner]

Women entered the work force during (and after) WWII (early 40's). And the higher tax rates following the war really helped to keep them there. Prior to WWII the average person had little to do with taxation. (And I'm not even going to get into the 16th amendment never having been ratified argument).

But after WWII taxation on the average person increased drastically (like your '54 tax rate quote shows) also there were a lot more things people wanted to buy (like housing, cars, TV's) that there hadn't been a demand for previously. I still believe that if there was a major tax drop (like switching over to a 5 percent flat tax), we'd see a lot of women leaving the work force and not returning. Because economically, both members of a couple wouldn't have to work to be able to afford the things they want.

Good in bursts.

[MikeFM]

I used to go a week at a time without sleep when I was a little younger and it didn't have much of a negative effect on my work. In fact I'd say it made my work much better. What did suffer was my health and social skills. I'd say it's a worthy trade off for short periods of time where you need to be glued to a project but not for extended periods. The main benefits besides being awake is stat your brain functionality seems to change a little the longer you go without sleep. It's easier to focus on a single problem and make mental leaps. The downside is you often end up with mental leaps that work but are hard to explain and multitasking becomes narly impossible. You get extremely grumpy too as you tend tos tart having fits of anger if anyone disturbs you. When you finally try to sleep it's difficult to do and you have dreams that are twisted and a bit deranged where your brain keeps trying to work on what you were doing but weird dream-like things keep creeping in. If you wake back up and work while in this dream-state your work is even more bizarre to figure out later. Often it's hard to remember afterwards exactly what you were working on. It fries your mind and sends you into depression if you keep going without sleep so use it sparingly.

Or at least that was what it was like for me. Unfortunately the health side effects mean I can't go without sleep entirely anymore so I sleep around four hours a day now.

For those who will understand

[mapkinase]

There was a fishermen tribe by the sea. God commanded them to rest every Saturday, so they set their nets before sunset on Friday and collected the fish Sunday morning.

The punishment for that tribe was that half of the tribe was turned to apes and the other half - to pigs.

Moral of the story: do not try to outsmart God.

Try neurofeedback

[cheros]

The problem with Ritalin (ie speed) is that it's an 'always on' drug, and ADHD appears to either lack or activity or overactivity of certain brain regions (both types of ADHD exist, which is why Ritalin doesn't always help). With neurofeedback you end up trainign those brain parts to perform as required (ie switch on and off as required) which is much more effective, and the results are permanent.

The nice thing is that you'll know within one or two sessions if it works, no need for months to wait before you know it works. I've seen plenty of kids being more or less 'rescued' from a life with Ritalin, that alone is worth a try..

soon?

[slashmojo]

we will soon be working 14-16 hour days

Passed that threshold long ago.. damn intarweb.

Although I am of course reading /. in those work hours.. ;)

ask an insomniac how great this idea is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have huge bouts of insomnia occasionally that completely prevent me from sleeping. I've gone close to a week without more than 3-5 hours of sleep total, and I can tell you from experience not sleeping is an incredibly BAD IDEA.

Who the fuck wants to voluntarily go wihtout sleep?

I have reached a point where my body FORCED me to dream, but I was still awake, hallucinating is not the word for it. Ever seen one of those movies where someone wakes up from a dream within a dream?

it's like that.

I once carried on a conversation with someone, woke up, and realized I was indeed talking to someone, but not the person I thought I was. it took a while to explain.

When someone taking this shit ends up sniping people from a water tower, I hope the first victim is the person that created it.

In real life, I *am* a Viking.

[Jizzbug]

Here's proof.

Here it comes ...

[operagost]

Once managers find out about this, we'll be working 18 hour days. The phrase, "It's not like I have to sleep or anything," will become ironic rather than sarcastic.

What about sharks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sharks must keep moving forward to breathe, because they do not have gills.

Most every part of a shark regenerates (except eyes and brain), and some think that sharks have a nearly limitless lifespan.

So here you have an animal that could be a thousand years old, and it has NEVER SLEPT!.

Maybe this is an arguement for lack of sleep causing psychotic behaviour.

Re:Not good..... Perchance to dream

[E 99]

I think we've barely penetrated the real reasons for sleep.

Just to amuse all you atheistic /.ers, my theory is that the purpose of sleep is dreaming. It's a kind of forced meditation to keep us capable of abstract and spiritual thought. Even with animals, it probably serves to help expand the bounds of their own mental/emotional horizons.

Think about it -- the body spends hours shutting down the brain, the body, the senses, and only once it's optimally quiescent, it wakes up only the mind, with the bodily senses still asleep. The once the dream stage is accomplished, you're done, and It's time to wake up "in your body" again -- often just in time so that you can possibly remember the content of your dreams.

Slashporn?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Yves (not his real name), a 31-year-old software developer from Seattle, often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one.'
Eeeewwwww

first patient!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4313978.stm

Oh jeez

[JustNiz]

Long term use of this stuff to avoid sleep will turn your brain to mush, but employers will love it.

Crainial Osteopathy

[Anonymous Coward]

Overlooking for the moment that the New Scientist seems to have published the story in February (its now November.. what were you doing? Sleeping??)

An alternative we should consider as well as these pills is Crainial Osteopathy. I've had a few sessions with a crainial specialist, and each time, I have quickly been sent to sleep, waking at the end of my hour session feeling VERY refreshed and alert. With no drugs.

And it sorts out a few other problems in my body while I'm asleep.

Re:Crainial Osteopathy

[The MESMERIC]

thicko its CRANIAL

how are we supposed to take advice from an idiot that remains anonymous and can't spell?

also you are suggesting more a treatment for restless sleep (such as Apnea) or insomnia.
the article deals more with remaining awake for long hours.

if you really want to have a refreshing deep sleep you might as well take Zolpidem in a comfortable and well-ventilated room.

code clean up

[erice]

If anything, the existence of vestigial structures make intelligence design/creationists look stupid. Why would an intelligence designer create a structure that serves no purpose, (though the same structure exists in other "lower" animals that the organism and the animal both likely evolved from a common ancestor)?

Creating Heaven and Earth in 6 days demands a fair bit of reuse of common functions. General code cleanup, include DCE failures like the appendix were scheduled for day 7. But after 6 days, He was tired and decided to stay home instead.

thank god for this

[elohim]

i'm coming up on a month where i will be on call every 3rd night overnight (this means 6 am to 11 am the next day or so, go home, regular day, then the next day is overnight again) and i must say this sounds like a blessing. i will definitely be trying this out. you don't know pain until you've admitted a crackhead with end-stage AIDS with changes in mental status at 4 am after you've been up since yesterday at 5 am, being kept barely awake with cup after cup of horrible coffee.

Drugs are bad, m'kay?

[ozbird]

I for one don't welcome our new sleepless, truck-driving zombie overlords.

Is conserving energy a reason for sleep?

[ashley_moran]

I've always had a theory that one of the main purposes of sleep is to reduce energy useage. Humans can't hunt at night, or do pretty much anything of any use, so we might as well conserve energy. A similar logic applies to many other predators (owls are awake at night because so is their prey) and diurnal herbivores I can think of. Every animal has a reason to prefer being active either during the day or night, so they gain a huge advantage by conserving energy the rest of the time.

Of course, IANA biologist. Is this a plausible theory? I've never seen it written down.

Interesting article on Salon.com about Provigil

[RevPsycho]

A Salon.com writer decided to try Provigil for five days to see how it affected him. It's hardly scientific, but it makes for an interesting read nonetheless.

Better waking through chemistry

Re:Polyphasic/"Uberman" sleeping - Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

For the last time - polyphasic is NOT 100% REM. Yes, a larger percentage of your sleep is REM, but a polyphasic sleeper goes through all normal sleep phases. You would die if you didn't

And, no, a drug like this would not help adjusting: you must be able to sleep approximatly every 4 hours, and that won't work if you're artificialy kept awake by some drug. The only thing that you need to adapt is willpower - lots of it.

I myself have lived for several small periods on a polyphasic schedule, but abandonned it mostly due to social obligations lasting more than 4-5 hours. For those who thing that skipping a 20-min nap isn't such a big deal: Once you're adapted, skipping a nap is like skipping a night's sleep - you're a zombie.

caffeine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyhow, when did pill-popping become fashionable? I fear the day where it's "uncool" to not stick some drug in you as part of your daily routine in order to get through the day (as opposed to treating disease). Or the "there's a drug for everything" mentality.

Seems we are well on our way towards that vision with our reliance on caffeine, though not largely in pill form. Have you seen the "America Runs on Dunkin" ad campaign? I think it is all too true. Seems all caffeine allows us to do is to stay up late watching television and get up early to go to work.

Yeah but at what cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, so he can work without much sleep, but how much shorter will his lifespan be?

BAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude thats more time for WoW raiding.
I can at least die in a lan cafe awake!

Can't sleep...

[Anonymous Coward]

Clowns will eat me!

Experiences with modafinil?

[FleaPlus]

As a busy grad student, Modafinil seems a lot like the Best Drug Ever, and I've been reading about it for the past year or so. So far in this thread with 400-some comments, it seems that only one person has actually posted about their experiences with it.

Has anybody else tried it, or know somebody who has?

Re:Experiences with modafinil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I take Provigil for a combination of sleep apnea and adult ADD. I've been on it for about a year. I hope to never be without it. I spent most of my life (55 years) fatigued, depressed, and incredibly distractible (Look! A chicken!). Provigil helps me feel almost "normal"!

Don't get on me about what's normal; if you've been demonstrably abnormal and miserable all your life, you'd recognize it when you saw it.

Re:Experiences with modafinil?

[UncleJooky]

I posted my experience a bit higher up.

Re:Experiences with modafinil?

[The MESMERIC]

... it seems that only one person has actually posted about their experiences with it.

Maybe some of us got bored of posting experiences each time the same old hype is recycled.

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159839 &cid=13386653

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=133435 &cid=11144573

and probably others.

Re:Experiences with modafinil?

[FleaPlus]

Ah, I guess I missed that one earlier. Thanks a lot!

I've been on it for a while now...

[altek]

It's called caffeine :)

I agree, this is unhealthy and bad for society.

[elucido]

Workers in America are already too productive. We do not need to work any more hours, and we do need our sleep.

How many people would really be willing to give up their sleep for their job? What makes you any different from a robot once you do this?

"thats where im a viking!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ms Hoover I ate all my paste, can I have some more?

No Ralph, Just put your head down and goto sleep"
"Oh boy, sleep! "thats where im a viking!

Wrong Approach

[Thumper_SVX]

Wrong, wrong wrong. If you have a job that keeps you awake so long you can't afford a night's sleep then you need to find a new job, not medicate yourself. You need to have a life, you need to work enough to live, not live enough to work. And you need to sleep, and be a social animal. To do less is to cheat yourself. These drugs just make it easier to cheat yourself and for your employer to cheat you. I used to work the 14 and 16 hour days until I made the realization that I was spending my entire life either working, driving or sleeping (what little I got) and I had no time for a social life.

In the last few years as I've gotten older, I've changed a lot. I work 8-10 hour days, I sleep 5-6 hours (I know, still not enough) and spend time with a wife and kids I adore. I wouldn't have been able to have any of that with the job I worked before. Now my job has changed again and I'm being encouraged to work 8 hour days... and told to leave at 9 hours because "... you should spend more time out of this place". That's per my manager!

The upshot? Medicating yourself cheats everyone and benefits no-one except a few more millionths of a penny on the company's stock price (if it's public)... if even that. You need to find your own value and value the life you lead. I may not be rich, but I am happy and have a family that money can't buy.

Bad side effects

[Clockwrk]

I used provigil for about a week and a half and I had some severe side effects. Heart palpitations, nervousness, shakes. It really messed me up. I had to stop taking it.

I have been battling sleep apnea for 4 years now. I thought this would help.

Sometimes the most important initials aren't MD...

[Vegeta99]

"You should sleep on it," isn't just a cliche.

Ask any psychologist you've got handy. Or even your mom. You /need/ sleep. These drugs might make it possible for the brain to function without stopping to take a rest, but just like any machine, it still needs its downtime. If you're spending ALL of your energy on working, then what about giving your brain time to reorganize? Work things out?

I really, really hope they do some in-depth studies on this, as I'm curious to see if I'm right.

I want!

[pureCaffeine]

Right, where can I pre-order some of these!

Half and Half

[Anonymous Coward]

People stay up for over two weeks with it (nevermind 48 hours!) but after a point an interesting thing happens where the brain hemispheres start taking turns shutting down and going into REM sleep. To the user, half their brain is dreaming and the other half awake, leading to an odd fused state of hallucinations that cannot be distinguished from reality.

I know what you mean. It's very weird having two bodies. It is also dangerous if you "forget" which body is awake.

Re:REM

[WilliamSChips]

The end of the world as we know it? (Sorry, couldn't resist the joke.)

Better than oldborn

[Siker]

I think most new children are newborn by default.

A bit of both

[willy_me]

Why do we sleep for ~8h a day? Why do we go through different levels of sleep? Here is how I see it. Having narcolepsy, I've thought about sleep quite a bit...

It's all about efficient use of energy - doing the most with the least food. There really isn't much point to being active at night so we sleep to minimize our use of energy. There are other reasons we require sleep but the reason we sleep for 8h (ie, throughout the night) is to conserve energy.

Humans evolved in groups as hunter/gatherers. Groups allows for some to sleep while others are alert for predators. This would be my explanation for the different levels of sleep. While some are completely comatose, others will wake at the slightest sound. People alternate between being alert and comatose throughout the night. The end result, everyone gets their deep sleep while being protected by those who are more alert.

Note that I didn't explain why we need sleep, just why we sleep the way we do.

If I'm right, we should be ok in artificially modifying our sleeping patters. We can now be productive at night and we no longer have to worry about predators. Why not just go into deep sleep for 4h and wake up refreshed? Evolution can't keep up with our quickly changing environment.

Now those at Stanford think that they have solved the mystery of narcolepsy. At a young age the immune system destroys a group of 10-20 thousand brain cells responsible for producing a chemical that puts the brain into deep sleep. As a result, those with narcolepsy are always tired because they don't get rested when they sleep (trust me, I know..) This drug has been identified so the logical next step would be to see if injecting this drug lets someone with narcolepsy reach deep sleep. The problem is that this drug breaks down in the body too quickly. An artificial version that doesn't break down as fast is required. Development time ~10-15 years mainly due to lack of funding.

But what if this drug could be taken to let regular people get a good sleep in 4hours? Would this not provide a much larger market for the drug? What effect would this have on our society? Just look at the effect the birth control pill had. Food for thought.

Willy

So...

[GungaDan]

sleep is where I'm a maths genius half the time and a poet the other half?

Drugs ?

[smoker2]

But I thought there was a War on drugs ?

wassat ? Oh these drugs are approved by the man coz he gets paid.

Typical !

Of course it's safe;

[Lost Penguin]

President Bush has used this for years .....

but wait....

I hate to break it to you, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to brea it to you, but people are not wired in a way which is consistent with your claims.

You see, your optic nerves split and each eye feeds both sides of the brain in a rather interesting and complex way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventral_supraoptic_de cussation

So closing one eye won't do much to help put half of your brain to sleep.

Dreams

[Intrinsic]

I have been studying dreams for a couple of years now, and for me sleep is vital. I record my dreams after I wake up and use their symbolism to better understand what my unconscious is trying to help me understand. I believe that the unconscious mind uses dreams to send messages to the conscious mind to help humans become more successful and live longer.

If that were removed I can imagine our psychology would find another way to send messages to the conscious mind while we were awake, which might me much more dangerous and stressful on our biology.

This drug really sounds pretty dangerous if someone were to use for extended periods of time.

Re:The body does not have a 24-hour sleep wake cyc

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, people put in total isolation will get a 30-hour sleep/wake cycle.

I for one...

[RobbbyRob]

...would like to welcome our new sleepless overlords.

yep

[zogger]

Not only soldiers but tourists and misionaries have gotten bitten by that drug. Makes some folks just go bonkers, but I think the drug companies and the DOD are still kinda not admitting it, but I would have to check on it to be sure.

Yikes.

[TheDarkener]

Ok, this time the caffeine train has derailed.

Seriously...Come on, you don't have to be smart to know that *people need to sleep*. There's more to your life and sanity than staying awake 24/7. There's a reason why you fall unconscious every night for hours at a time: your brain functions on many different levels. When you deprive it of functioning on the levels that are associated with sleep (theta/delta/low delta) you will, in essence, become a crazy person.

I'm finding out, more and more each day, how F*$#d up Western culture is. Seriously. Try meditating *once* in your life and find out for yourself how important (and beneficial) not being in a constant beta brain-state is.

I have used modifinill

[giblfiz]

I actually have some modifinill, (which can be acquired by prescription under the name pro-vigil) and have used to stay up before. Its not at all how I expected it to be though. See, what is weird about modifinill is that it doesn't keep you from getting tired, it just keeps you from getting slow, groggy or stupid. It does work really well for that though. I suppose that some of what is making me feel "tired" when I use it might be my social conditioning telling me that I should be in bed at four am. But it's hard to tell.

My understanding is that the military gives a similar substance to it's pilots for long runs (I believe that they use adrinifil, which is the chemical that your liver turns modifinill into)

Re:Hack The Human OS

[DaftShadow]

I'm no scientist, and for all I know these new drugs could prove to work just fine. But from what I do know about sleep, I'm pretty skeptical of the long-term effects of taking these drugs. There is obviously something necessary about sleep that regulates our personalities, maintains our memory and keeps us from literally going nuts - and also that keeps us alive. As we still haven't identified exactly what the mechanism is that does that, I don't really see how all of that could be boiled down into pill form. We've taken an unknown and claimed to have replicated it.

I've always wondered about tidbits like this. How come we aren't hacking at the Kernal in a situation like this? Computer needs a daily reboot or it starts to act skitzo, so we say "no, no, don't rock the boat. Just keep using it." Hardly a geeky thing to say :)

I think it's awesome that there is progress being made to remove the necessity for sleep from our existence. How cool would it be to not have a required shutdown every evening? Someday we'll be talking about humans that have been online continuously since the start of Web 3.1415926536 . w00t. :)

- DaftShadow

STOP THE HYPE

[The MESMERIC]

I am aware that Cephalon is spending a fortune on viral marketing.

Without the hype induced placebo this drug is nothing more than a MDMA/Ephedra mix without the bad music.

Stop buying into the hype.

Fed up of seeing the same exaggerated claims appearing repeatedly, recycled specially in Slashdot.

signed: An ex-modafinil user.

Sorry I'm so late to the party

[viewtouch]

Sleep is NOT behavior that has evolved 'for some reason'. Sleep is a metabolic imperative. It is the 'normal' state of life. Being awake is a temporary state that is actually destructive to the metabolism of cell life. Being awake is necessary to move around and obtain food and to procreate, but being awake is not necessary for anything beyond this. After the food has been obtained and the procreative act is complete then the life form able to end the destructive metabolic state of 'being awake' and return to the constructive metabolic state, otherwise known as sleep. Asking the question why do we sleep is akin to asking the question why do we live. The answer is that we do. Asking the question why do we wake up is a question that actually makes sense and can be answered with ease.

The only way to understand sleep / awake is to first understand anabolism / catabolism, balancing metabolic states. Sleep and Awake are balancing metabolic states, nothing more, nothing less. Just because we can exhibit 'behavior' when we are awake does NOT mean that sleep has anything to do the the notion of behavior. And just because we can measure brain activity during periods when we are awake or asleep does NOT mean that sleep is anything more than a metabolic state. Sleep is the Normal, Natural state of any living organism. Awake is just heightened activity and enhanced skills necessary to obtain food and procreate. Making too much of what being awake is is the source of all the confusion and misunderstanding about what sleep is.

Perhaps something a little more modern...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snape: What about Potter? Should he be warned?
Dumbledore: Perhaps. But for now, let him sleep.
For in dreams, we enter a world
that's entirely our own.
Let them swim in the deepest ocean
or glide over the highest cloud.

Re:Perhaps something a little more modern...?

[mink]

From chapter one of the Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who say you are dreams am a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a wise man may explain it; that tomorrow will not be for ten thousand generations.

        --Chuang Tse: II

Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish bangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and.power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking . . . .

What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?

eyes in the dark..

[NekoXP]

.. one moon circles

High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[melchoir55]

Cones do not detect color, rods do not detect black and white.

Cones are sensitive to daylight conditions while rods are sensitive to low-light conditions. Your cones are inactive during night lighting conditions and you still construct your visual field in color. As a result of being keyed to daylight, cones are also used for edge perception. As such, you will find it quite impossible to read by moonlight, as reading requires your cones to distinguish very fine edges and your cones are inactive in nigh-light. (regardless of how bright the moon is.)
Rods are particularly good at sensing motion, though not edges. As you may guess, this means humans are better at sensing motion *at night*. As such, you will not be able to tell which claw a bear is swinging at you in your peripheral vision, though you will be able to tell a large object is hurtling toward you. In fact, due to the physical setup of your eye, it is advisable to "look" at objects in night conditions without focusing directly at them. You have a .3mm concentration of cones in the center of your eye, thus the center of your eye is completely incapable of helping you in these conditions.
This setup (being able to distinguish edges and detail better during the day and being better at detecting motion at night) seems to suggest that humans were on the defensive at night and actively engaged in the world during the day.
The human vision system is much more effective (for things that we need to be spending time on) in daylight conditions, I find it *highly* unlikely humans were nocturnal in anything that might resemble recent history.

We also do not detect 3 colors and then construct other colors out of a combination of these. Our S, L and M cones are tuned to respond most agressively to specific wavelengths of light, though they are still responsive to wavelengths that are "near" those. There is even a theory that some women posses a gene (that can only be carried on a second x chromosome) that produces a fourth type of cone. These cones are tuned to detect light in between the wavelengths of the L and M cones, giving these women the ability to distinguish between colors that a tri-chromatic individual would see as identicle. These women are ingeniously deemed "Tetrochromatic superwomen".

Don't be sad if all this contradicts what you were told in high school. High school teachers, by and large, aren't on the bleeding edge of cognitive science.

Re:High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[svyyn]

As such, you will find it quite impossible to read by moonlight, as reading requires your cones to distinguish very fine edges and your cones are inactive in nigh-light. (regardless of how bright the moon is.)

I had read this recently and decided to try it during the next full moon. (I live in a rural area with little to no light pollution). As it turns out, my friends and I were able to easily read the nutrition and ingredients info from a soda bottle. My conclusion is that, although it is more difficult, on a clear night, the moon is sufficiently bright to read by.

There is even a theory that some women posses a gene (that can only be carried on a second x chromosome) that produces a fourth type of cone. These cones are tuned to detect light in between the wavelengths of the L and M cones, giving these women the ability to distinguish between colors that a tri-chromatic individual would see as identicle. These women are ingeniously deemed "Tetrochromatic superwomen".

Red and green detection genes are on the X chromosome, and a number of alleles exist (few for Blue). People with red/green color-blindness most often are missing one of the genes completely, though possibly have two copies of the same gene (therefore red/green color-blind people may see red and green as 'red' or 'green', depending). Some people, though, have two distinct genes that detect 'red' at an abnormally high wavelength and 'green' at an abnormally low wavelength. If they are a woman, then their other X probably has normal genes, and they end up being able to tell you that those two yellows simply don't match. Guys who have it probably don't know they're not normal red/green color-blind.

Re:High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[gasmasher]

I find this interesting since I spent many of my childhood nights reading by moonlight. I remember opening the blinds and moving the book so that each line was illuminated. Maybe I had the help of a neighbors porch light, memories can be fuzzy. I wear glasses now since I have one myopia in my left and hyperopia in my right eye. I wonder if there is a connection.

Re:High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[Carewolf]

No, you can read in moonlight. Full moon provides enough light that you can see as detailed as in daylight, you only lose color and ambient lighting.

Re:High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[hey!]

Don't be sad if all this contradicts what you were told in high school.

Oh puh-lease. If we're talking about recieved knowledge, it is not at all impossible to read by moonlight once dark adapted.

If we must be pedantic, color doesn't exist at all. It's a neurlogical phenomenon which allows animals to make rough distinctions between different wavelengths of light.

With respect to human vision in particular, human visual capabilites are irrelevant. My point was about a theory of early mammalian evolution. As others have pointed out, when mammals moved into daytime niches, they only had two pigment molecules left, as a result of which their color vision was extremely crude. Later a mutation in one of those pigments provided a third wavelength, giving ability to distinguish wavelenghts equally situated on either side of the original two pigments' pass bands.

I thank you for your lecture though.

Re:High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[melchoir55]

This experiment is not valid unless you do it in the complete absence of artificial light. It takes very little artificial light to activate your cones, so little in fact that I would suggest being tens of miles away from the nearest active light-source.

I should have included references, since contradicting "common-sense" views often requires more substantial argument than mere lecture.

Here is NASA explaining just why you can't read by moonlight:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/28sep_stra ngemoonlight.htm

Re:High school understanding of the eye is wrong

[melchoir55]

This reference is to NASA explaining just why you can't read text by moonlight. I should have included it earlier. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/28sep_stra ngemoonlight.htm

Color, as a phenomena, exists (as you point out in a neurilogical manner). You are right to point out that there is no "redness" floating around attached to objects. I'm not sure, however, how this is relavent to anything that I said.

I also assumed you were talking about early human evolution, not mammalian evolution as a whole. It seems hard enough to speculate about early human evolution, much less speculate about the evolution of mammals. This of course doesn't mean it's impossible, I just didn't expect anyone to be doing it so I filled in your argument with what I assumed you were talking about. Slip up in my interpretation of your meaning, I apologize.

Wake me up

[mlk]

when they make a pill that does my work for me, so I can have a lie-in

System Maintenance

[Meph_the_Balrog]

What it's actually doing and why is what we don't really know yet.

Someone rigged a defrag and checkdisk process to run once every 12 hours? =)

No sleep for 3 days, no big deal

[iendedi]

When I was younger (teenager, college), I my typical sleep pattern was awake 2-3 days, sleep 10-12 hours, awake 2-3 days, rinse, repeat. I lived like this for years. I simply didn't get tired until the second or third day.

Sometimes (like during finals), I would happily stay up for 5-6 days straight with no adverse affects. I don't know where you get the idea that someone will have permanent personality changes from 3 days without sleep, but you are not correct.

Yves...?

[Zerbs]

I used to work with someone named Yves Bunn, although he was only 7 inches tall, wrote in crayon, and had cotton for brains. Come to think of it, he didn't sleep either. I'll need a different forum though to discuss why a stuffed animal was the attendance officer for our group, or why he was writing specs for our projects.

I take the stuff every day

[scottv67]

The brand name is "Provigil". One thing that no one has mentioned so far is that it is as expensive as hell. I'm glad my insurance covers it.

When I first started Provigil (as a way to deal with the daytime sleepiness caused by RLS), it was like hitting the nitrous oxide button in a dragster. I could feel that shit kick-in and I felt like I never had to sleep again and I could do anything. My mind went a million miles an hour. My mood also improved considerably. One of the things that I had be to be wary of is taking Provigil with coffee. The caffeine and Provigil mixed together like gas and fire and it was too much stimulation. So I had to take the Provigil with water or decaf soda.

Now that I've been on it for a few months, it doesn't hit quite as hard. I can take it with soda and I don't feel overstimulated.

Does it work well for daytime sleepiness? Yes. Could I take a pill every six hours and never have to sleep again? No. It only depresses the need for sleep, it does not eliminate it. It's like not paying your cable bill for two months. You may feel like you have some extra cash for one month but then when that second bill comes, now your cable bill is twice as big as when you pay it on time.

Provigil lasts for about six hours before the tiredness returns hard and I crash.

There are some interesting side effects like the fact that it is a very appetite suppressant. If I take a pill at 4:00pm, I can stay at my desk at work and continue working until 8:00pm or 9:00pm without craving the meal that I am missing.

Will this pill eliminate the need for sleep? Hardly. It just helps the people who have sleep disorders (like me) to deal with the daytime drowsiness. I saw one post that said "I'd hate to see the code produced by the guy mentioned in the article when he goes for days without sleep." That is a very accurate assessment of the situation. Yes, you can suppress the brain's need for sleep for a while but your "accuracy" is going to suffer. If you are doing manual labor, that's not an issue. If you are debugging code, then you definitely have a problem.

Provigil is not the magic drug that it sounds like in the story. I take it every day and I still go to bed at 10pm and try to sleep until 6:00am the next morning.

For the MDs in the crowd: I have had two sleep studies and both clearly showed that I have RLS or Periodic Limb Movement Disorder. I don't have sleep apnea. I move too much at night to get decent sleep. For now, the Provigil helps with the drowsiness I feel during the day. I have tried the anti-Parkinsons drugs like Requip and Mirapex. They didn't work. Have also tried Neurontin and a few "non-drug" solutions like taking magnesium supplements. I have had my ferritin levels tested and my iron is right where it's supposed to be. Any suggestions on successfully treating RLS are welcome.

drug for no sleep

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah it's called cocaine..

Yves, get a life.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either that, or get a new job.

Full Buffers.

[emjoi_gently]

I've always imagined sleep in computing terms.
In our waking state we are absorbing huge amounts of data. Visual, Sound, Emotional, etc etc. Massive amounts.

As well as keep us functioning, our brains also have to process this stuff. Store it into some logical categories in it's database, but it's too much of a job to do realtime.

So, our bodies have to be taken offline to allow the processing to be done. Dreams being part of that sorting of info.

When I've been awake too long, I get that Full Buffer feeling. I don't want to absorb any new inputs.

Just raving...

Doing my body a favour

[RealGrouchy]

I'm going to do my body a favour and go to sleep instead of reading TFA and the comments.

- RG>

As a user

[runcible]

I have a diagnosed "sleep disorder", but the actual root cause is my job -- I run an OPS group, so insanely long and/or irregular hours are the norm ( guaranteed to have to work 48 hours straight about once every three months, and have to run on 2-3 hours of sleep pretty regularly ).

To "manage" this, I have a perscription for Ambien ( just switched to CR, `cause it makes it easier to go back to sleep after having to wake up and work for two hours in the middle of the night ) and a perscription for Provigil ( 400 mg/dy ). The pharma is what lets me cope with this schedule when I need to, otherwise I'd be jello.

I have nothing but good things to say about Provigil, it lets me do what I need to do without worrying about whether or not my body can keep up. Not to mention the newfound ability to drive from NYC to Miami with nothing but gas an bathroom breaks. However, there are a couple big things that get overrepresented, or that don't get considered:

1) This stuff lets you operate for long periods of time without sleep and more-or-less without accruing sleep debt, and it lets you function semi-normally on very little sleep. However, it does not keep extended periods of sleeplessness from taking a mental toll -- the longer you go without sleep the more your cognitive ability and short-term memory suffer, modafinil doesn't change that. So yeah, I can run 40 hours straight no problem taking 400 mg of this shit every 12-14 hours, but you get gradually dumber over that span even though you can stay alert and responsive. By the end of a 40-hour run I'm functioning at low-normal to low intelligence, my short term memory is basically nonexistant, and I'm extremely distractable...to the point where sometimes I trail off in the middle of a sentence. So if you do anything other than long-haul trucking, your work will suffer as time goes on.

2) Potential for psychological dependency is very high among the subset of the population likely to use it for its "lifestyle" effects. It improves your concentration by orders of magnitude and lets you run at that high level for quite a while before secondary fatigue effects (see above) start taking a bite out of your performance. For people who derive large portions of their self-worth from their mental abilities, this shit is anabolic steroids -- won't hook you physically, but it makes you *way* better at what you do. And you start to miss it if it isn't there.

3) It gives you headaches -- not all the time, but often enough. Since I started regular use, I get headaches at least 30% more than I used to. Also it can make you really nauseous -- although it also seems to have an appetite supressant effect, and an empty stomach combined with coffee consumption and smoking more heavily than normal could explain the nausea. Also, it makes your urine smell really bad, which has a nice synergistic thing with the nausea...

Already Have it

[Jwink3101]

I swear we already have this. I got to Carnegie Mellon University. We are trained to not need sleep. Who needs a pill? Of course, i get little to no sleep and i am studying Physics. You should see how little my friends who are Computer Science majors get.

Forget Coding

[SRA8]

What is wrong with you people? There are more important things in life than the lasest release of your software. I dont use drugs, but if I did, it sure as hell wouldnt be so I could make our release deadlines. CHILL out. Work is not important, I dont care what you do. Your health is the most important thing.

Re:Forget Coding

[SkunkPussy]

When people are candidly and honestly sharing their own experiences in public, in order to usefully contribute to a discussion, despite the fact they are admitting to illegal activites, the last thing they need is a do-gooder who has no idea what they're talking about coming in and criticising their behaviour.

Go back under your rock.

You don't need REM Sleep

[Jugurtha]

There was a case of a woman who lost the ability to have REM sleep for over a year. It was thought for years that a person needed to enter this period of sleep but it turns out you don't, because she didn't suffer any serious effects. I don't doubt that in 50 years we will have a complete understanding of the human brain and how it works. At that point we can manipulate our genetics through drugs or gene therapy to eliminate the need for sleep. I know personally that I hate sleeping and would gladly do away with it if I could. From the article. "The study also backs up reports of patients who lost both their dreams and their REM sleep for up to a year after taking certain antidepressant drugs. "These people don't go mad," says Horne. They are completely normal and have no memory problems."

An alternative..

[olman]

If you don't like going by the way of 1st gen anti-sleep pills, there's one alternative for guys who work in rotating shifts or just plain are not morning people -

Melatonin. That's the stuff your brain actually syntesizes by itself to control the day-night cycle. It's not a sleeping drug per se so it's probably not going to help on insomnia, stress etc. But what it does help on is shifting your sleeping cycle around.

I go without a pause from going to bed around 1am and waking up at 8am during working days to staying up until 2-4am and sleeping until 11 or so during weekends. Reverse obviously does not happen that easily. Naturally I can shift my sleeping cycle backwards by about 30mins/day at most. In other direction it easily jumps by 1-2 hours.

With melatonin I can fall asleep "early" at sunday nights so I'm not crippled by 4 hours of sleep due to being unable to fall asleep until 4am.. Works just fine after I take long nap after work, which would also "naturally" keep me up until 3-4am..

The downside is that when the melatonin is processed during the night, you may wake up during the night or too early in the morning.. But all in all I get a lot more sleep than I do "naturally". There are no real side-effects as far as I can tell (beyond weirdness involved with kicking your sleeping cycle around)

Other Side Effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Thrombosis and brain cell death.
Chilling the room with antartic settings, is another programmer give-away. Best code is delivered when it is cold.

Programmers that do not lie down, put huge pressure on veins, and end up later in life with Lympodemia - swelling of the legs etc. The little valves need a rest too. So if you do this and sit upright, buy surgical stockings - 30Hg not the sub 20Hg one sold for airline death thrombosis.

A medical journal reported these narco drugs are not good, and kill brain cells. It compared all the common drugs - enough to scare one off them all, only opium had a low side effect, and that LSD the worst when it comes to killing braincells.

The only good hit, is hitting the pillow. Sleeps a luxury item -grab it while its free.

ugh, i cannot believe this

[Anonymous Coward]

take it from someone who can't sleep even if they want to: you WANT to sleep! let me explain;

Even if i go to bed at 10 pm, after a full day of work/school, i seem to wake up at either 12:30 am or 2 am. Do you have any idea how stressful it is too wake up and realize that for the next 6 or so hours, your going to be completely alone? you can't call anybody on the phone, their all asleep. you can't go for a walk, (i live in a small town and the whole place is dark and asleep by 11 pm).

IT SUCKS!!

for a while, the nights were the hardest, having no human interaction. my doctor put me on these sleeping pills that made me a complete zombie 24-7, so i stopped taking them as per her advice, and now at least i can enjoy the downtime at night after some effort. but by about 11 am or so, it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with anyone. its so stressful having been already awake for 10 or so hours, that i can't even explain it. teachers/friends are talking and your just ready to go to bed.

IMHO, this drug seems like an incredibly bad idea. people need their sleep.

P.S.
excuse my spelling as i have, of course, been up all freaking night.

Coding for 100 hours without sleep

[tttonyyy]

When I was at uni, I left an OpenGL software project too late before deadline. I underestimated the massive amount of work it would take. It was due in Friday, I realised Sunday evening. I worked late into the night, until it was so late, I figured I might as well not bother sleeping. So I didn't. I stayed up for five days coding solidly, including throughout the night (coffee fuelled), stopping just to fulfil basic body functions. The project got done, and it looked great.

But, I learnt a few things.

My body followed the daily cycles despite not sleeping. Each day I would be at my least attentive between 4am-8am. Then, by mid-day I'd be feeling a lot more awake and alert. I did not hallucinate in any way, but I did feel like crap pretty much all the time.

In hindsight, because I waas so tired during the days, I'd have probably got exactly the same amount of work done if I'd followed the normal cycles and slept during the nights. It definitely doesn't do you any favours to skimp on the sleep.

And on the fifth day, after I handed it in, I slept very well. :) (But it did take another week to fully recover from my sleep depravation).

Do not try this at home kids.

wow core duo birds

[cheekyboy]

These birds have dual core.

Cool.

I sometimes close one eye if im really tired, it helps rest it, perhaps the muscles only, but it helps.

Keeping up with the Jones'

[juushin]

Apologies if this comment was already made but I was unwilling to spend an entire afternoon reading through all of the replies/comments.

What I find so troubling about this article, and several others that New Scientist has posted on this topic in the past six months, is that we are going to reach a point (at the present trajectory) where each one of us will be weighed in productivity against a peer or colleague that is taking Modafinil. Clearly one can produce more work per unit of time (particularly if that unit of time is >24 hrs) on modafinil. Those taking modafinil will have a 'competitive' edge that will motivate others to take the drug and so on and so forth. It is the sleep equivalent of steroids (and performance enhancing drugs) in sports or stockpiling nuclear warheads.

However, the real issue at hand is how many of us are willing to improve our productivity by taking a drug for which we know absolutely zero about in terms of its long term impact on human health. If people continue to plunge into physiological uncertainty by self-prescribing Modafinil, how will it impact us: that is, the group that refuses to even the playing field by sacrificing our long-term health and mental stability.

Ballard:

[berbo]

J.G.Ballard wrote a short story on this idea: 'Manhole 69'.

(in his story, the lack of sleep is surgery rather than drug induced, but the idea is the same)

He does an amazing job of describing the negative mind-altering side effects.

word

[ClioCJS]

w0rd. .
you tell 'em! .
.

Our rats snore

[leonbrooks]

Some of them do, anyway.

And all of them spend some time sleeping during the day.

Don't know about sleep as protection, but some of them fang you fairly thoroughly if disturbed.

Bit hard on the dinosaurs, though...

[leonbrooks]

...being fed all of those slack museum visitors instead of healthy, wild food.

Still, I guess it would clean up their gene pool. Eventually.

Disadvantages?

[leonbrooks]

As long as they don't provide any disadvantage, they're not going to be eliminated from the gene pool.

Appendicitis would be a fairly strong disadvantage. As would dying because you didn't have an appendix to filter certain things out.

Our appendix is liable to damage, it can fall ill by itself, it costs energy etc to grow & maintain, etc. Everything has disadvantages.

Using the logic you present, every feature we have should find itself deprecated relatively swiftly.

Correction - Modafinil is NOT a stimulant

[Anonymous Coward]

> Exactly. Sleep-cheating drugs are nothing new...

> ... stimulants, be they modafinil, the neurotoxic ampakines, or amphetamine ...

The poster is right that stimulants are not new. However, Modafinil is NOT a stimulant, and doesn't work like a stimulant at all.

I first became aware or Modafinil when I read about it in Dr. William Dement's book The Promise of Sleep. In that book, Dr. Dement talks a lot about the concept of "sleep debt," and the idea that while you can use stimulants to prolong your normal sleep cycle, you still have to pay back the sleep debt eventually, or it will seriously mess you up in the long run. He said that in his entire life, he had only ever seen one drug that actually eliminated sleep debt - Modafinil. However, he also cautioned about using it, since it was untested and no one knew how it worked, or what the long term side effects might be.

So I got my doctor to prescribe some for me, officially for my ADD, and tried it. It costs about $10 per pill (!), and appears to work as advertised. I found that I could stay up all night and take a single pill, and it made me feel like I'd gotten about 6 hours of sleep. If I got a short night's sleep, like 3 or 4 hours, I could take half a pill, which would give me the equivalent of an additional 3 hours of sleep. And unlike stimulants (which I have also taken), with Modafinil I never had to pay back the sleep debt later.

With stimulants like amphetamines (and even caffeine) as you undoubtedly know, if you take them for too long there's a cumulative effect that builds up, which makes you anxious and distracted, until eventually you (hopefully) catch up on your sleep. Modafinil isn't like that at all. I haven't used it a lot, but at one point I pulled two all nighters back to back (and I haven't done even a single all nighter since I was in college, over ten years ago) - and by taking a couple pills, going about 56 hours without sleep was no big deal. I felt fine, and I never did have to pay back the sleep I lost. Though when I did finally try to go to sleep later, I didn't have any trouble falling asleep at all, and slept very normally - just as though I'd been getting good sleep all along.

Obviously, the potential for abuse here is huge. I try to use Modafinil sparingly, but it's seductive to know it's there when you've got a big project hanging over you. I don't know if Modafinil is healthy or not in the long run - but I do know it's a lot healthier and more effective than amphetamines in the short run. And mechanism it works by is completely different.

I'd love to hear reports from other people out there who have also taken it.

First Day on Modafinil

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading this I contacted my MD and got a prescription for Modafinil (Provigil 200mg). I have a qualifying condition (obstructive sleep apnea, untreatable by CPAP).

OMG! I feel supercharged! I once took some speed about 15 years ago and felt EXACTLY like this. I have never (legally) felt this AWESOME. Now let's qualify this with I'm usually half asleep because of the apnea but this is magic.

I LOVE THIS PILL!!! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Not nasty

[Mark of THE CITY]

Not nasty, just not discriminating when it comes to self-protection.