ihavebeenfloated

I spent a good portion of my free-to-do-nothing time at work, in between treatments on patients, to look into the strange connection between grapes and polyphasic sleeping that I mentioned earlier. I wont bother linking to the eighteen thousand pages I researched but the short of is that, so far, all my research has been completely inconclusive, and I would even go as far to say that the grape banter is complete nonsense.

As it is, red grapes are rich mainly in the substance called resveratrol, which is an antioxidant that has recently been linked to lowering cholesterol, lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, and potentially lowering the risk of cancer as well (if not possibly curing cancer?). Very interesting. There are some other chemicals found in grapes as well, but they seem to all be forms of antioxidants. Another note worthy ingredient of grapes is queritrin, another possible anticancer agent. Aside from those, I can’t remember anything else extremely important from my main time of research and my minor search right now.

Sleep deprivation, on the other hand, triggers all sorts of chemical deficiencies (that grapes do not help with, as far as I know). There are three seemingly major things sleep deprivation does to your system that I found and feel worth noting here. One, your ability to process insulin drops by about 30% and the speed in which your blood sugar drops after a spike due to a high carbohydrate meal is slowed by about 40%, resulting in a state that is an early symptom of type 2 diabetes. Two, you produce excess cortisol to levels that are about equal to heightened levels in the elderly, which scientists believe may be linked to memory loss and the aforementioned resistance to insulin. Three, sleep deprivation can results in a lower level of thyrotropin (thyroid-stimulating hormone) which can cause something akin to minor hypothyroidism. (I read this last night but I can’t find the link between hypothyroidism and sleep deprivation made directly, but I remember reading that bit.)

For more about this, I recommend this article about a study done a few years back. A lot of the sites I find with information about chemical deficiencies due to sleep deprivation reference this study.

There are a few other things I found out, but nothing that really comes to mind as being important. Key words of this stuff would be: endocrine function, apoptosis, melatonin, prolactin, proanthocyanidin… Sleep deprivation causes lower levels of a lot of chemicals that control reactions to stress and depression. The general gist I got from a lot of the sites is that sleep deprivation can quickly lead to depression, suicide, general stupidity. Being that I’ve already died a few times, killed myself a few times, and have come to grips with being depressed to the point that I’m happy, I’m not too worried about those things.

Fact is, it seems, there has been no real scientific research into whether your body can adapt and start producing these chemicals over again once it becomes used to a schedule such as Uberman’s sleep. All these studies so far have been having the test subjects go from a normal amount to sleep (8 hours) to a subnormal amount (4 hours) for about a week. With no long term testing available there is no way to know whether the body adapts. Essentially, in my opinion, these tests that have been run so far are simply system shocking the body, seeing what levels certain chemicals are at, and then letting them go back to normal. (Which they do, with no adverse reactions.)

It might be stupid to assume, but I am going to anyway, that your body can effectively adapt to a different sleeping schedule. In fact, in my opinion, I think there is no reason not to assume that… and I think I’m going to find out, aren’t I?

My conclusion as to the whole grapes connection, I think it’s nonsense. I suppose if I get a strange craving for grape juice when I finally make the switch to Uberman’s sleep, I’ll research it further.