Randy wanted to do something big when he entered his high school science fair. He wanted to set a world record for sleep deprivation by staying awake for 11 days. He accomplished this feat with the help of two friends, but they also caused him to experience the symptoms of sleep deprivation: memory problems, decreased motor skills, and even hallucinations.
Many of us have experienced sleep deprivation, where we had to sleep all night to finish an assignment or go out. We feel sleepy, sluggish, and angry the next day. When sleepless nights accumulate into two, four, or 11 nights, what happens?
Sleep is a mystery to scientists. Brendan Lucey is an associate professor of neurology and director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. According to Lucey, scientists don't know why sleep evolved, but they theorize that its role in brain function, memory consolidation, and metabolism has led to its extinction across species.
We know that sleep is important to our health, and we look at what happens when we don't get it. A person with a blood alcohol level of.10 percent, above the legal limit for driving in most states, would lose coordination and good judgement after just one sleepless night. We show increasingly stranger symptoms as sleepless nights accumulate.
One night of lost sleep can cause a lot of problems. The prefrontal cortex of the brain is the one responsible for higher reasoning like attention, problem solving, and decision making. A study found that people had trouble distinguishing between smells like pizza and grass after a day of wakefulness.
The body begins to experience physical symptoms of sleep loss after two days without sleep. Natural killer cells, the cells that fight tumors and viruses, decrease by 37 percent after just 48 hours of wakefulness, according to one study. Images can form incorrect on our retinas if wakefulness is not stopped. These may be as benign as believing the room is larger than it is, or as frightening as the appearance of an imaginary person or animal.
Your body will begin to force you into unconsciousness at this point. Microsleeps last between 1 and 30 seconds. You don't know you're having them. If you have ever nodded off in class or a meeting, you know that they can be dangerous, but they can be more innocuous. Delta waves, which are associated with deep sleep, have been detected in the brains of severely sleep deprived humans.
You could slip into a state resembling psychosis in 96 hours. You can experience delusions, like imagining that your neighbor is planning your death, or you can be convinced that you are on a secret military mission. Imagined sounds and sensations are in your head. Depersonalization is a condition where you feel detached from yourself and others. You can no longer see reality correctly.
Does sleep deprivation affect you?
A good night's rest can help severely sleep-deprived people recover from these symptoms. What if sleep deprivation continues indefinitely?
A rare genetic disorder called fatal familial insomnia pushes past the upper limits of sleep deprivation that humans can tolerate. FFI affects less than one person per million each year. The disease begins with mild insomnia in the middle age and progresses to complete sleep loss and death due to brain damage.
How to get better sleep.
Mild sleep deprivation can have harmful effects on health. The body has a lot of systems. Insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea, and shift work are some of the causes of sleep deficiency and have been associated with a higher risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease.
Sara Benjamin is a clinical associate at the Center for Sleep. Benjamin says good sleep is a matter of routine. She says most people do best with a set schedule.
It means waking up at the same time every day. Benjamin says to have a wind-down period before bed, when you stop doing productive things, put down your screens, and begin to relax. It's important to remember that sleep is just as important as anything else you're doing for your health.
The longest time without sleep category was stopped by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1989. The last official entry is the 264 hours without sleep of Gardner.
