Sleep pills may have unexpected effects on the brain

So many of us struggle to fall asleep and stay there at night. About a third of American adults are not sleeping enough. Adolescent sleep is even worse; 8 in 10 teens are deprived of sleep.

Our collective fatigue is not good for us. Lack of sleep can come with a variety of health problems. Our immune systems, hormones, hearts – perhaps all major body systems – are affected by sleep. In the brain, memory, creativity and our ability to learn are too.

But for something that is so intertwined with our health, the actual sleeping jobs are still, in many ways, a mystery. Scientists have thousands of ideas: maybe sleep is to rest in memories, to choose important ones. Or maybe it’s a quiet time, still for bone growth in children. Or maybe it’s a time to let the brain lose in whatever problem that bothers you that day. (A myopic theory is glad that sleep, especially the rapid stage of eye movement, is for squeezing the fluid around the eye to keep it lubricated.)

Understanding why we sleep we are in doubt scientists as long as the question existed. Likes how to follow hundreds of bread that disappears on the trails across a tree forest that continue to change the points, just to realize that it is only in your underwear. Oh, and you forgot to study for the test.

Given this foggy scientific landscape, it is not surprising that efforts to help catch up with some Z can fall short or have unintentional consequences. This is clear from a new study of the Zolpidem sleep medicine.

Zolpidem, sold as an ambient, digs with another possible sleep work – keeping the house. Everyone 20 seconds or more, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid pulsates through a person’s sleep brain. Scientists suspect that these rhythmic pulses cleanse waste products, including the adhesive proteins that accumulate in Alzheimer’s disease.

This brain washing is a kind of direction of the dishwasher overnight, says neuroscientist Maiken Nergaard, who helped detect the system. Washing is not a light job, but an important one that is not fully appreciated. “The whole function of keeping the bedroom has been ignored for many, many years,” she says.

Mice in Zolpidem fell asleep faster and slept deeper than rats that sleep naturally, says Nergaard, the University of Rochester in New York and the University of Copenhagen. But they had less energy washing, her team reports on February 6 lockup.

Scientists still do not know if this happens to humans, or what may be the consequences of this weaker cycle of washing. But the results show possible obstacles to our efforts to start sleep.

Zolpidem targets Gaba, a chemical messenger who sends “Hush” signals. “It means you are closing everything in your brain,” says Mit Robert Stickgold scientist Robert Stickgold. It is a powerful, strong tool that does not need to know why you cannot sleep. Pain, stress, restless legs – all of these can lead to insomnia. “The ambien doesn’t care,” says Stickgold. “The ambien will simply hit you on the back of your head with a sledgehammer.”

Ambien -aided sleep can be justified for short stretches, says Nergaard. But long -term use has significant side effects. Brain clearance disruption can be one. “We need a new sleeping help that makes people sleep, but keeps these shakes,” she says.

But for people in sleep straits, open strength sleep pills are better than sleepless at all. “I tell people sleeping medications are terrible things,” Deadpans Stickgold. “You should never get them. If you can’t sleep well without them. “

Scientists are not trying to help people sleep better. They are also pushing the boundaries of what can achieve the sleeping brain. Researchers can instruct a sleeping person to dream of special objects such as trees, sharpen their piano game skills, and perhaps even learn a new language. These deeds are impressive, but they can include trade, warns Stickgold. If you are forcing your sleeping brain to do something specific, “then you are getting less something else,” he says. “We have to assume something else is there for a reason.”

Humility is the way forward to understand – and justify with – a system as complex as the sleeping brain.“Maybe impossible for us to know everything, ”says Stickgold.

So maybe we don’t have to expect a simple answer to the question why we sleep. It can be for bone growth, sharpening memories, cleaning the brain and many other tasks. In the following years, we will undoubtedly find new data on how sleep keeps our bodies and minds healthy. And these scientific bread can lead us to even more mysteries.