Sweet sleeping in April /
(Aprile, dolce dormire).
By Renato Cocchi, MD.
This is an unusual proverb. Any of the other
proverbs dedicated to the months does not concern a neurophysiological
function, but usually botany or agricultultural, or season-related problems.
So, or "Sweet sleeping in April"
is nonsense, which obeys only to the need of an assonance (i-e, in the Italian
form) to helping our memory or it has a profound sense.
As for me, I am inclined to the second
hypothesis, even because any out of the other monthly proverbs is not nonsense.
What I shall write here concerns only Italy and
its course of the seasons. So it is possible that it is a local phenomenon, but
it is even possible that we are dealing with a general phenomenon, perhaps
postponed (in May) in other European countries to increased North latitude.
It is even possible that it finds again in
the southern hemisphere, with six months difference to occur. I don't have
exact knowledge as for this, but if were a similar proverb in spring, for other
countries, the fact would confirm the symptomatic description of a very curious
phenomenon.
The change of the season produces a stress,
to which, in spring, the body usually reacts with energy loss ( the so-called
"spring asthenic forms."
As it happens in all stresses, it acts on
the GABA-glutamate retroactive pathway.
The body, in a not rationally aware way,
tries two compensation lines:
- The increasing of the muscular production
of the glutamine to expenses of the ATP, from which the asthenia;
- The reduced consumption of the glutamate, by
lowering the work of the sensory pathways, which have this neurotransmitter to
send information. Reducing the glutamate consumption, drives to have more of
it, for its transformation into GABA.
Sleeping allows exactly to decrease the
sensory pathways' work.
Italian translation / traduzione in italiano
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