The Brain by Gary L Wenk

Author:Gary L Wenk [Wenk, Gary L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780190603397
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Can I get too much sleep?

Do you remember when you were a child and had the measles, or some other infection, and you fell asleep on Monday and woke up on Thursday? When you are sick, elevated levels of invading bacteria or viruses induce your immune system to defend you. The debris from this battle includes a collection of molecules released from the carcasses of these invading bugs, including pieces of bacterial cell wall (called lipopolysaccharide) and bits of nucleic acids from inside the viruses. This is all part of your normal immune response. As a consequence, these inflammatory proteins floated into your brain and induced a normal and very prolonged sleep cycle. Your brain evolved to respond to illness by making you sleep in order to allow your injured or infected body to heal.

This same principle is true for other animals. Animal species that sleep more tend to be healthier. The daily number of hours an animal sleeps is correlated with the total white blood cell count and inversely correlated to the relative frequency of infections experienced by that animal species. Sometimes, however, the normal response of the brain to induce sleep goes too far and sleep can last too long.

Kleine-Levin syndrome is a good example of this extreme response by the body. Occasionally, following a minor flu-like illness with upper airway infection and an acute mild fever or even tonsillitis, some people will experience attacks of excessive sleeping, called hypersomnolence, which usually appear and end quite suddenly. Sometimes sleep lasts from several days to several weeks. The interval between attacks can last for several weeks to months, and sometimes even many years. Thus, getting too much sleep is not always an indication of good health.

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