Awakenings restart autonomic recovery

This proposed menopause study asks whether each awakening resets the body’s recovery, explaining sleep instability even when hot flashes are suppressed. The mechanism defines autonomic recovery as automatic heart-and-blood-pressure regulation settling after waking. Blocking the neurokinin 3 receptor, a signalling pathway used to suppress verified hot flashes, would separate recovery from vasomotor symptoms. Researchers would estimate each person’s recovery time, tau, after isolated awakenings, then give a matched second awakening early or late in tau. The prediction: recovery finishes about tau after the last awakening, whatever came before. Progress that survives interruption, or impairment past tau, would weaken the model. Sleep-stage shifts and unequal awakenings must be controlled.