YAAAAAAAAWN: Might the relationship between yawning frequency and cortisol levels be a hallmark of diseases such as multiple sclerosis?© ISTOCK.COM/MERBE
Bournemouth University neuropsychologist Simon Thompson is an expert on yawning. In 2011, he posited that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol may be a direct cause of yawning. “We believe that cortisol levels rise sufficiently to trigger a yawn for the purpose of lowering brain temperature,” he says.
The idea became known as the Thompson cortisol hypothesis (Interact J Med Res, 1:e4, 2012). Linking yawning with fatigue, cortisol, and brain temperature, the hypothesis is ideally suited to being tested on people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Patients with the neurodegenerative disorder often report frequent yawning. They also suffer from fatigue, which has been associated with elevated brain temperature (Neurology, 86:P2.172, 2016).
Up to now, experiments to test the hypothesis have only been conducted on healthy ...
