If they are unable to sleep and rest until they die from exhaustion, wouldn’t they just forcibly fall asleep through the power of general anesthesia?
In: 1975
Skipping whatever opinion you may have on Michael Jackson his case is a great example for it. In his final days of life he suffered from severe insomnia so he paid off a doctor who was putting him to sleep by using propofol – anesthetic drug and it didn’t work very well. He was still exhausted, tired and depressed so during the day he was using other drugs to stimulate himself and appear to be in great shape.
At the time he was working on a big event that supposed to pay off his massive debts, but inability to sleep and forcing himself to function while using crazy mix of drugs eventually led to his tragic death. It’s not eli5, but it’s a great example of someone trying this method with fatal failure.
Anesthesia doesn’t put you to sleep,.it makes you unconscious. There is no rem or different levels,.so no rest would be had.
Not sure about this specific illness but there’s a sleep illness that prevents people from falling asleep. They do use anesthesia but that only works for a while until the body resists it or something, and then they try a different blend of anesthesia but I think it only prolongues life by a few years?
There’s a case study [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781276/) on someone who tried tons of different methods of treating FFI. Fascinating read.
It looks like at some point anesthesia was used and it did work to some degree, though I’m not sure if it sas the same types for typical general anesthesia.
Interestingly, taking stimulants upon waking seemed to help a great deal in that the subject felt better while awake and was able to sleep more reliably due to the rebound when the stimulants wore off.
Most answers here are pretty good, sleep and unconsciousness are very different in terms of what’s happening in the brain. I’d just like to add that there have been studies in the last few years into the drug dexmedetomidine (Precedex). It’s already used as an anesthetic and for ICU sedation, however new data have shown it potentially has some sleep-mimicking affects on the brain. Admittedly, we know very little about how sleep and unconsciousness really work, as well as how dexmedetomidine can affect sleep. But it’s a very interesting area of study that seems to show some promise!
There’s a very interesting book on this topic, fatal insomnia or FFI which stands for Fatal Familial Insomnia, it’s called The family that couldn’t sleep
Side question:
For those cases of severe insomnia that isn’t being caused by brain worms (prions) or another degenerative disease…. General anesthesia would still not help because it’s not technically sleep? Like brain activity has slowed to a crawl but none of the healing and regeneration mechanisms are engaged? Or am I way off?
There are few things to unpack
– Being sedated and or unconscious is very different from sleeping
– Fatal familial insomnia, while having insomnia in the name, it is just a symptom of your brain basically chopping itself up. Not the sleeplessnes that kills you
General anaesthesia is not sleep, it just knocks you unconscious. For the patient it feels like no time has passed.
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