Have muscles taken over brain's reponsibility to combat sleep disorders?

New Delhi: The modern-day lifestyle may have its advantages and conveniences, but like two sides of a coin, it has its negatives too – one of them being lack of sleep.

Sleep is an important aspect of a healthy life, wherein the lack of it can harm your health and cause sleep disorders like restless leg syndrome, jet lag, narcolepsy, night terror, sleepwalking, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), insomnia, etc.

For the longest time, the answer to sleep disorders has been believed to lie in the brain which controls all aspects of sleep.

However, this perception may change as scientists have found a protein present in the muscles that can lessen the effects of sleep loss.

Researchers from University of Texas Southwestern in the US demonstrated how a circadian clock protein in the muscle – BMAL1 – regulates the length and manner of sleep in mice.

The surprising revelation challenges the widely accepted notion that the brain controls all aspects of sleep, they said.

The team found that while the protein's presence or absence in the brain had little effect on sleep recovery, mice with higher levels of BMAL1 in their muscles recovered from sleep deprivation more quickly.

Removing BMAL1 from the muscle severely disrupted normal sleep, leading to an increased need for sleep, deeper sleep, and a reduced ability to recover, researchers said.

"These studies show that factors in muscles can signal to the brain to influence sleep. If similar pathways exist in people, this would provide new drug targets for the treatment of sleep disorders, said Joseph S Takahashi, Chairman of Neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

"This finding is completely unexpected and changes the ways we think sleep is controlled," Takahashi added.

The study was published in the journal eLife.

(With PTI inputs)