When one falls asleep is it due to a natural chemical ( a sedative of some sort) released by the brain?

It’s due to tiredness. Seratonin does help with the calming down of the heart rate though.

Also, melatonin and adenine both help one fall asleep. However, I’m not a neurochemist so I can’t claim to be sure about the exact pathways.

However, that is how caffeine works, it’s an adenine mimic and blocks the adenine receptors in your brain, thus stopping the sleep signals from getting through.

Also, in general it’s a safe bet that pretty much anything that occurs in your brain can be tracked down to a chemical (or, usually, a large number of chemicals). We, naturally, only know a very small range of what they all do or how, but it’s mostly all chemical and electrical signals in the end.

It is a scientific fact, undocumented but known to moms, that sleeping babies and small children give off ‘sleep rays’ which cause uncontrollable drowsiness in nearby adults.

Neurotransmitters in the brain cause sleep. A chemical called adenosine occurs that causes drowsiness. it dissipates while we are sleeping.

I like @ccrow ‘s answer.

@ccrow really??!! I asked a question a long time ago now about why I start yawning when I’m reading my (baby at the time…) child his bedtime stories… ‘sleep rays’ you say…can you tell us more please?? and @Sponge great question…my mum takes melotonin to help her get to sleep which I believe is par tof the chemical process… but one wonders how this releasing process gets kicked off as such…fascinating!!