The secrets of sleep,? In your hair?.
Understanding the biological clock and sleep a person could be as easy as studying a lock of her hair. According to research, contained in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and LiveScience, the hair follicles recorded the activity of genes (genes CLOCK) that influence the time when we fell asleep and woke us. This finding could mean an advancement to better understand sleep disorders, some, tera gold, with no cure today.
Our sleep cycles are controlled largely by the so-called 'CLOCK genes', which vary their activity during the day, setting the pace of our biological clock, which drives our circadian cycles (which dictate when we wake up and when sleep).
The discovery of these genes took place a decade ago in research on, tera gold, sleep and waking times set by the circadian cycle, but their study had been scarce and unreliable results until the team of Makoto Akashi, Yamaguchi University, in Japan, these genes extracted hair follicles and isolated so that achievement could work independently with them.
Basto with 10 hairs from the head of a person to obtain information about these genes. A group, tera gold, of people were forced to change their habits of sleep in about 4 hours for three weeks. They found that genes that influence sleep patterns had changed their behavior in two hours, a mismatch that can explain phenomena such as jet lag or fatigue despite the long sleep though, is made after hours.
More serious is when investigators found that workers who had changed their shifts up to seven hours, the activity of their genes had scarcely changed in two hours. "This means living in a 'jet lag' constant, which can lead to serious heart problems and strokes," he stated Akashi.