Word: insomnia
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...Sunday morning, but the 400-plus kids at the Fantasy Ranch dance club won't be making it to church. Instead, amid sweeping lights and the raw thumps of the aptly named song Insomnia, they sing the praises of the most recent drug to hit central Florida: Special K. "It's the bomb," gushes Tom, a sweaty 15-year-old with a struggling goatee. "It will make you like this," he says, rolling his eyes up as if staring at his brain. "It's dreamy. You see the lights, like, bend...
Another line of investigation revealed that serotonin may play a role in sleep. Destroy the raphe nuclei in cats, and they develop permanent and total insomnia. Give the wakeful cats a shot of serotonin, and they immediately go to sleep. In humans the amino acid L-tryptophan, which is converted to serotonin in the brain, is sometimes used as a sleeping pill. (A bad batch of L-tryptophan killed several people in the late 1980s and effectively killed the craze.) In another experiment, researchers discovered that when they stimulated raphe cells to release extra serotonin not in the brain...
...market lately. Last year the FDA approved Redux, a drug that controls appetite by boosting levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, producing a sort of chemically induced illusion of being full. A similar medication, sibutramine, is expected to be approved soon. Both drugs have side effects, however, including fatigue and insomnia...
...called "clock gene" in laboratory mice, with its 100,000 bits of information on sleep patterns, mood swings and hormone levels, is an important step towards isolating a parallel gene in humans. This could allow scientists to zero in on the causes of diseases such as insomnia and depression that are related to disturbances in circadian rhythms. It may also help explain why medical conditions such as asthma and heart disease worsen at certain hours. To do so, scientists must isolate ten more genes related to bodily rhythms. Maybe even in humans...
...menstrual cycles cease, women in their 30s and 40s can be subject to distressing symptoms. Like adolescence in reverse, the transition out of fertility, called perimenopause, is a time of wild hormone swings. And they can trigger a long list of problems, among them hot flashes, pimples, dry skin, insomnia, depression and lapses of memory...