Fatal Familial Insomnia

Worse yet what's the point of meditating at all if you are going to go mad from a lack of sleep and die within a short period of time no matter how or if you meditate. If sleeping pills don't work for this then what's the point of meditating? I mean the point would be to get to a point of sleep right? But if its physically impossible it wouldn't matter what you try and do with your mind.
 
Lucysnow said:
Worse yet what's the point of meditating at all if you are going to go mad from a lack of sleep and die within a short period of time no matter how or if you meditate. If sleeping pills don't work for this then what's the point of meditating? I mean the point would be to get to a point of sleep right?
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It's like suggesting to a starving person that he should work the land, sow crops, wait a while, work some more, and then eat.

Lucysnow said:
But if its physically impossible it wouldn't matter what you try and do with your mind.
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Edit: Ah yea, good point.. lol
 
Originally Posted by Enmos
No. How are you going to meditate if you have sleep deprivation ?
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I was replying to this:

Lucysnow said:
There are meditation techniques that are purported to be even more efficient in restoring the body than sleep.Some meditators sleep about 2 hours a night, or less, and meditate for 4 or 6 hours.Of course, this sort of meditation requires quite a bit of practice and a quite different lifestyle than we are used to here in the West.
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I wasn't just randomly throwing it out there.
 
Signal said:
The Nazis did experiments with sleep deprivation in their camps. Some of the test subjects survived the sleep deprivation and were able to function. And later on, after the war, they were still unable to sleep, but were otherwise functional.

This suggests that it must be possible to become so trained as to manage to live without sleeping.
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The US did loads of experiments with sleep deprivation in Guantanamo Bay Prison and some of them even died from torture . 50 families worldwide is not that alarming in a world full of illnesses .
 
Lucysnow said:
So does this mean if its a recent mutation that it could spread given time?
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Absolutely. In fact, it's safe to say that it has been spreading, since it's been observed to be clustered in 28+ families. This suggests that it's been spreading via inheritance.

Lucysnow said:
What would cause a mutation? I mean AIDS was said to come from human contamination with animals, why would a gene suddenly mutate and create a new disease?
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Mutations can be caused by a number of mechanisms. Most commonly they are the result of one of various kinds of "copying errors" that occur when DNA replicates itself during cell division. They can also arise from exposure to radiation and carcinogens. This wiki section has some pretty good info if you're interested.

Also remember that AIDS is a virus, not a genetic disease.

Lucysnow said:
Also why does it start to affect the person so late in life?
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I don't know how this disease in particular works, but if I had to speculate, I'd guess that the mutation in question causes the carrier to be deficient in producing a certain protein involved in the process of transitioning into sleep. Deficient, but importantly, not absent. It's likely that the symptoms are expressed in a milder, sub-clinical form for much of the person's life, when their body is producing just enough of the protein to make the symptoms unnoticeable. (It could also work as a threshold sort of effect.) The accumulation of environmental stressors could be what pushes the disease into harsher expression later in life. This is how genetic dispositions for things like type II diabetes and heart disease work; they depend on additional environmental factors to be fully expressed.

This delayed expression is important for spreading the disease via inheritance, as the carrier has time to reproduce and spread the mutant gene to offspring before being incapacitated by it.
 
It mentions that the cause is a prion, just like BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Which means that the protein is one normally found in the body, but is folded differently. The protein that is mis-shapen may not even be the gene where the mutation is found, and its sequence could be identical to the 'regular' one.

That level of protein analysis is a pretty new field in the scheme of things, so it's not surprising that we have identified so few cases. The disorder itself has likely been known for some time, but the cause attributed to something else.
 
Dub_ said:
Absolutely. In fact, it's safe to say that it has been spreading, since it's been observed to be clustered in 28+ families. This suggests that it's been spreading via inheritance.

Mutations can be caused by a number of mechanisms. Most commonly they are the result of one of various kinds of "copying errors" that occur when DNA replicates itself during cell division. They can also arise from exposure to radiation and carcinogens. This wiki section has some pretty good info if you're interested.

Also remember that AIDS is a virus, not a genetic disease.

I don't know how this disease in particular works, but if I had to speculate, I'd guess that the mutation in question causes the carrier to be deficient in producing a certain protein involved in the process of transitioning into sleep. Deficient, but importantly, not absent. It's likely that the symptoms are expressed in a milder, sub-clinical form for much of the person's life, when their body is producing just enough of the protein to make the symptoms unnoticeable. (It could also work as a threshold sort of effect.) The accumulation of environmental stressors could be what pushes the disease into harsher expression later in life. This is how genetic dispositions for things like type II diabetes and heart disease work; they depend on additional environmental factors to be fully expressed.

This delayed expression is important for spreading the disease via inheritance, as the carrier has time to reproduce and spread the mutant gene to offspring before being incapacitated by it.
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Wow. The last paragraph is scary; the thought that a gene concerns itself with its own production. Thanks so much for your response.

Thanks Idle mind for helping me understand this.
 
i know setitives dont work but if they are dificent in the sleep chemicals (like melon) couldnt they be injected straight into the hypothalumus as a treatment. after all if it doesnt work, puts them to sleep for good or kills them im sure they would take that trade off.

further more i wonder what happens when they get really drunk or get a blow to the back of the head. after all unconciousness is also caused by that same brain region
 
Dub_

not acording to wikipedia. it causes a soluable protine to become insoluable as is comes in contact with the effected protines. there for the time laps. it takes time for the effected protines to build up and the plaque to grow in the thalumus. think about it like a heart atack, you dont get a heart atack when you eat your first cheese burger, it takes time to build up the plaque to the point where you get the heart atack.
 
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Idle Mind said:
It mentions that the cause is a prion, just like BSE and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Which means that the protein is one normally found in the body, but is folded differently. The protein that is mis-shapen may not even be the gene where the mutation is found, and its sequence could be identical to the 'regular' one.
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Asguard said:
Dub_

not acording to wikipedia. it causes a soluable protine to become insoluable as is comes in contact with the effected protines. there for the time laps. it takes time for the effected protines to build up and the plaque to grow in the thalumus. think about it like a heart atack, you dont get it when you eat your first heart atack, it takes time for the damage to build up
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Thanks for the corrections. I was going only off speculation. I suppose I could have read about it more carefully. ;)
 
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