Genetics is being found to control a lot of things. And we are going to control these super genes for our advantage using a new generation of drugs. Imagine only sleeping 6, 4, or 1 hour a night and waking up refreshed and ready to go with no caffeine and you can just go all day long until the same time the next night, not feeling drained. Or what if you could just start running and keep running the length of a marathon with having no prior training or habit of exercise in your life. These things a small percentage of people can do naturally and soon you might be able to too.
It was discovered that there are genes which control our need for sleep. One of these genes is called DEC2 and allows for people to have no urge to sleep more than 6 hours. DEC2 is a very rare gene mutation that only occurs in about 1% of the population. There are expected to be many more sleep gene discoveries. One of these discoveries I saw on the news last month and they claimed it crammed more REM sleep cycles into a shorter period of time and people typically only slept 4 hours, one individual claimed he was happy with 1 hour. I think cramming in more REM sleep into a shorter period of time could help people that have serious sleep disorders that might only sleep an hour but wake up not feeling refreshed. It might help anyone who needs more REM sleep. People that have this sleep gene also have an easier time recovering from sleep deprivation. According to doctors they can make a drug that does the same thing as this gene.
Hearing about this in the news also reminded me of a NOVA show I watched talking about the discovery of a gene that allowed humans with no experience to just run a marathon with no training, and not get tired. They were able to breed rats to have the same gene and they would just not get exhausted when they were pushed to the limits of a hamster wheel. The doctor who discovered this claims to already have made a drug that activated this gene. You might ask how can a person get a gene activated, weren't we born with our genes? Well we where born with genes but according to epigenetics each gene has something like a dimmer light that can be partially activated or partially turned off. This drug would crank up the light. I could see how a drug like this would be beneficial for obese people who get tired out easy while exercising and choose to stop or quite the effort all together. In fact this gene works by telling the body to burn fat first which has 9 calories per gram as opposed to 4 calories per gram for carbs and protein. Having these extra calories to the disposal of the individual is what gives them the endurance.
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