Research has shown that sleep disorders can significantly impair cognition. These problems include both insufficient sleep and sleep disturbances that disrupt the brain’s ability to organize and process information, particularly during REM sleep.
Poor sleep has also been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers have found that sleeping poorly increases levels of beta amyloid, a protein associated with the disease.
Enhances Focus and Concentration
Excessive daytime sleepiness is a major problem for patients with narcolepsy, whose fatigue and loss of focus can increase their risk of car accidents and other types of occupational accidents. Modalert significantly reduces this risk by enhancing alertness and concentration. It has also been shown to improve real driving performance in narcoleptic patients compared to a placebo, which may have implications for safety in the driving population.
Modalert is well known as an effective treatment for narcolepsy, but it is increasingly used off-label by healthy people seeking cognitive enhancement, including students who use it to study for exams. It is the first drug to show cognition-enhancing effects in the absence of sleep deprivation, and this raises important ethical questions.
Several authors of the article that discusses this topic have financial relationships with Cephalon, the manufacturer of Provigil, but none have disclosed these conflicts. In light of this, the authors should have recused themselves from the review and drafting of the article.
Reduces Fatigue and Low Energy
Fatigue is a common problem experienced by people with a number of neurological conditions. It can be caused by multiple factors including sleep deprivation, circadian disruption and medications (e.g., antidepressants and steroids). It can lead to impaired concentration and thinking, and reduce motivation and mood. Fatigue can also interfere with daily activities and increase the risk of accidents. Modalert 200 Australia helps individuals stay awake and alert, making it easier to focus on tasks without feeling drowsy or lethargic.
In a trial of patients with narcolepsy, MOD significantly improved self-reported fatigue and objective EDS measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and Maintenance of Wakefulness Test. A similar study found that a combination of scheduled naps and MOD was superior to scheduled naps alone for treating fatigue and EDS in people with narcolepsy.
The alertness-enhancing properties of modafinil may be related to its ability to improve cognition in the sleep-deprived state. Specifically, its binding to DAT appears to inhibit DA uptake in certain brain regions and enhance learning by increasing hippocampal acetylcholine release. This is the mechanism that underlies the cognitive enhancing effects of MOD in healthy individuals and people with neurological disorders.
Enhances Memory and Attention
Although it was originally developed as a drug to treat sleep disorders, modalert is also used off-label to enhance cognitive function in healthy adults. This is referred to as ‘nootropic’ drug use. Modalert’s effectiveness in enhancing cognition is independent of its well-known effects on alertness, as demonstrated by a number of randomized controlled studies (e.g., the US Modafinil in Narcolepsy Multicenter Study Group). These studies have found that modalert improves performance on a variety of tasks such as digit span, spatial planning, and SSRT without any speed-accuracy trade-offs. It also increases performance on a number of attention tasks and is associated with enhanced prefrontal activation. (See, for example, Sawaguchi T and Goldman-Rakic PS (1994). Effect of the wake-promoting agent modafinil on nigrostriatal dopamine neurons in monkeys performing a delayed match-to-sample task.
Enhances Cognitive Function
Since its development, Modalert has primarily been used to treat sleep disorders such as narcolepsy and obstructive sleep apnea. However, it is also often used off-label for cognitive enhancement, where it boosts a person’s alertness and concentration, for example, to help with exam preparation. Previous studies of Modalert have shown that it does indeed improve cognitive function in sleep-deprived people. Visit allDayawake for more information.
More recently, however, several studies have found that it enhances cognition in people who are not sleep-deprived, suggesting that it has procognitive effects independent of its known effect on the treatment of sleep disorders. More research will be needed to investigate the nature of these effects and how they relate to clinical outcomes.