Dr. Matt Walker

And then when you looked at PTSD, I told you that REM sleep is a time of this remarkable decrease in noradrenaline.

But if you look at PTSD patients, they actually have heightened levels of noradrenaline and also in the body adrenaline as well.

In sleep?

In sleep and also when you look just as a basal state as well.

So there's something not quite right with the noradrenaline story in REM sleep in PTSD patients.

So I had just published this paper and I was up at a conference in, I think it was Portland,

And I presented the theory that, or the data that we had on healthy people, and I put forward this theory of PTSD.

And then later that afternoon, a psychiatrist came on the stage called Murray Raskin, and he was working a lot with PTSD vets.

And he described data, which I couldn't believe.

It's one of those moments, Andrew, where you're at a scientific conference.

And I think it happens maybe once in a career, if you're lucky.

All of the hairs on the back of my neck stood on a sharp end because he was saying, we've got this data and we don't quite understand it.

We've been treating our patients.

for blood pressure, for hypertension, using a generic drug called Prazosin.

And Prazosin blocks the adrenergic response in the body because you're trying to sort of tamp down that sympathetic activation in the body.

So it's a beta blocker?

So it's an alpha adrenergic antagonist.

So it's not a beta blocker, but it's blocking the adrenergic system.

And so, and it's a, you know, it's a generic, pretty cheap drug, but it turns out that it crosses the blood brain barrier.

So it doesn't just stay within the body, it goes up into the brain.