Today I Learned:
1) JFK was physically very challenged, and spent much of his presidency on medication. Some of that was pretty damned strong medication. In fact, it's very possible that he guided the nation through the Cuban missile crisis while on opiates. Relatedly, Hitler apparently was pretty heavily medicated during his reign as well? Also Napoleon?! Rumor has it he was in terrible pain the night before Waterloo and couldn't sleep, so he took some opiates to ease the pain -- perfectly by-the-book medicine for the time, but maybe not the best thing to do the night before one of the most important battles of his career. These need confirmation.
2) Even though mice and rats are noctornal, they have virtually identical patterns of blood melatonin to humans, a diurnal species. So either they have the opposite response to melatonin from humans, or they don't use melatonin to regulate sleep.
3) Zebrafish sleep, though not particularly soundly -- they'll still dart around once or twice a minute, but they're considerably less active, and harder to stimulate, at night (or in the dark (controlled for temperature))
No comments:
Post a Comment