What are some factors that would induce random, but temporary, bouts of unconciousness?
Are there any such world elements that would seemingly randomly cause creatures to faint for extended periods of time, ranging from a few minutes up, but revert before they started suffering permanent consequences?
One possible example that could cause this is anesthetic in the air, moved by wind, but this might not be possible if it becomes too diluted or too omnipresent.
The more hard-to-predict and understand via the primary senses, the better.
Bonus: Can the reasons suggested overlap without conflict?
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1 answer
Narcolepsy is a pathology that lists sudden events of muscle collapse, akin to fainting, or seizure attacks, among its symptoms. As far as we know today, it does not seem to be entirely due to external factors, although there may be triggering external cues.
In some cases they have measured a diminished concentration of a neuropeptide called Orexin. If this reduced level of orexin were linked to the cause of narcolepsy, then it is not impossible to imagine a retro-viral agent that could induce an auto-immune response leading to the depletion of Orexin.
While the immune system often has a hard time directly fighting back retroviruses, it is completely in the realms of the possible that the infected immune agents could be identified and eliminated by the rest of the system. This could happen naturally, with symptoms like fever, pallor, increase white blood cells, or perhaps facilitated with the aid of external medications, in the way the childhood leukemias are treated.
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