The brain may be about to have its Ozempic moment

My partner has had idiopathic hypersomnia (sleeps 12 hours most days, as much as 18 hours some days) for a few years now, and so far nothing we’ve tried has worked without awful side effects (e.g. constant heart palpitations and panic attacks.)

I had been looking into orexin agonists (along with other things like H3 autoreceptor antagonists) back when they were just a concept. It’s good to see them finally reaching commercialization. Although they’re not approved by our own (Canadian) regulatory body quite yet.

Now that they’re approved in the US, though, I’m looking very much forward to seeing how these drugs perform in off-label-ish treatment of the various other sleep disorders that I’m sure clinicians will now begin throwing them at.

It sounds like is a genuine treatment for those who suffer from narcolepsy, and everything else is merely speculative and has seem pretty bad side-effects.

Well, they're filming the next season of black mirror right now, it's probably not too late to throw this one in there.

I like sleep - it's not a problem to be solved.

185 comments 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49263658

If this means I don't have to take Methylphenidate to function 100% all the time and as a result feel tremendously anxious 100% all the time. SIGN ME UP.

Despite the stigma surrounding semaglutide, its impact across various health conditions has been remarkable. Bringing that same level of innovation to cognitive disorders could be truly transformative for society

Sleep less and sit more. What a species we’ve become.

"Others are exploring their use for treating sleep apnoea, which is a far more common disorder." CPAP biomedical equipment manufacturer watch out!

A better modafinil? Sign me up.

The second I read the print in Nature a bit ago I knew some version would show up here. I swear I’ve met deployed Marines less obsessed with staying awake through chemistry than some people here.

To get a job at our company take three pills of brainOzempic every day to maximize productivity.

We have our NeuroLinkBrain Implant plugin to AI agent , so that you can vibe code 24/7 . To maximize shareholder value.

Hooray fatal insomnia

24/7 stock market, least sleep needed, most AI piled, I’m very excited!

Aw hell no

I’m not about to stifle research into genuinely useful therapies just because some aspects of society will abuse the absolute shit out of them, and these therapies seem profoundly useful to those who suffer from the mentioned ailments.

Here’s the thing: what a lot of these drugs are doing are basically acting as equivalents to the store-bought neurotransmitters you’d find in things like SSRIs or -phetamines/stimulants. To people lacking in these substances, they’re game changers.

The problem right now is a mismatch between regulation, availability, and testing regimes. Regulations are meant to prevent dystopian shit like employers mandating (or encouraging) a drug regimen for employment through threat of punitive fines or prosecution, while the private insurance markets promote unaffordability domestically (as North America is where over half of pharma revenues come from) and testing regimes fail to identify who is best suited for a given drug. All three of these prongs will shake out in time, but cause new problems as a result.

Where we’re at right now is less of a click-baity headline from The Economist, and more at the start of a new frontier in medicine that capitalizes on decades of research. We’ve maximized the benefits of “low-hanging” chemical-based drugs, and have moved into more complex, nuanced, or targeted drugs developed through modern compute rather than traditional drug trials alone. Things will change very quickly, and then stagnate again when we’ve picked clean the easy fruits from these new branches.

wow. now i'm really excited for the future

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