Eating may rejuvenate a tired body, but new research in fruit flies suggests that fasting actually helps ward off the ravages of sleep deprivation.
Starving sleep-deprived fruit flies sheltered the insects from sleepiness and fended off learning and memory difficulties associated with grogginess, researchers report August 31 in PLoS Biology. Starvation may slow down the buildup of sleep-inducing substances that accumulate while an animal is awake, says Paul Shaw, a neuroscientist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who led the work.
The new study suggests that a rise in lipids, a type of fat, during wakefulness makes fruit flies sluggish. Learning how lipids induce sleepiness may eventually help develop new sleep remedies and shed new light on how sleep evolved.
The findings herald “a big change for the field” of sleep research, says Robert Greene, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “It emphasizes the importance of metabolism and its interaction with sleep.”