Orexin/hypocretic receptor signalling and cancer.
Let's consider Orexin/hypocretin receptor signalling and how we may exploit this system for brain cancer management. As we can see in the diagrams below, orexin neutrons regulate various activities such as wakefulness, feeding, reward and thermogenesis. A ketogenic diet, normalisation of sleep/wake cycles, fasting, stimulation of thermogenic pathways and giving the brain fuels it thrives on could act as key strategies we can adopt to take advantage of the fact that orexin appears to have potential as a novel, highly-specific treatment for various localised and metastatic cancers. This is not quite as simple as it may sound as you can always have too much of a 'good' stressor or thing before it becomes 'bad'- eustress vs distress. We know of course that fat is a very efficient source of energy for the brain and ketone bodies are neuroprotective, the body energy level influences orexin neuronal activity to coordinate arousal and energy homeostasis. Management of chron...