Matthew Walker

But if you look at the electrical signature during that quote-unquote increased deep sleep, it's not the same.

Ambien takes a big bite, there's a big dent out of the very slowest of the slow brainwaves, and it's the slowest of the slow brainwaves that drive the glymphatic system.

So what they found was that when you take Ambien or you give mice Ambien, yes, they sleep longer.

They seem to have more deep sleep.

But the brain cleansing mechanism seemed to be reduced by anywhere between 30% to 40%, which is counterintuitive.

If you're sleeping more and you're getting more deep sleep and the glymphatic system is active during deep sleep, you should get greater cleansing of the brain.

Here, they found, yes, the drug increased sleep, particularly deep sleep, but it impaired the cleansing of the brain system.

And so I think it's... Now, have we got evidence of that in humans yet?

No, we don't.

I don't think it's far away, though, because there was a counter study that brings us on to Web 3.0.

There's a new class of sleep medications.

It's the first class of medications that have actually been...

publicly advocating for.

They're called the DORAS drugs.

D-O-R-A small s. And they are a class of drugs and there's three of them that are FDA approved right now.

DORAS stands for dual orexin receptor antagonists.

which means that these drugs go in there and they block the action of a chemical called orexin.

What is orexin?

Orexin is the volume button for wakefulness.

It dials at wakefulness.