The Dangers of Being Really, Really Tired 469
Sleepy Dog Millionare writes "Brian Palmer, writing for Slate, asks 'Can you die from lack of sleep?' and shockingly, the answer may very well be Yes, you can. Palmer points to 'ground breaking experiments' in the area of sleep research. It turns out that sleep deprivation can actually be deadly in rats. The obvious conclusion is that it is probably deadly in all mammals. So the next time you think you need to pull multiple all-night hack-a-thons, ask yourself if it's worth risking your life for."
If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't be able to get a first post.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish people would take the dangers of even small amounts of sleep deprivation more seriously.
Even missing an hours sleep could be enough to kill some poor sod who happens to be crossing the road at the same time as you miss the red lights.
In the modern world it seems to be macho to go without sleep. In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
It may, depending on what you're doing. Being deprived of sleep (or stoned) is the only way I can even contemplate boring tasks -- decorating for example. If I'm capable of doing something... anything that's even vaguely interesting then boring tasks are going to be put off.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
boring tasks -- decorating for example.
In my experience, it is possible to find someone else who will quite happily actually insist on taking care of all one's home decorating, with even some fringe benefits thrown in. Of course some might find surprising disadvantages to my solution, like sudden difficulties completing 24h WoW sessions, but as TFA says even the average slashdotter needs his beauty sleep.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was younger I'd sometimes go as much as a week without sleep. It does make a difference in how you solve problems. With massive sleep deprivation problems requiring critical thinking become harder but problems requiring creative leaps get easier. You end up in something close to a waking dream state. I wouldn't suggest it for average problems but if you get really stuck on something that is very complex it can help.
Of course most problems of this nature can be solved by just relaxing in a quiet place for a while and letting your mind wander. There is something to different states of mind but it's best not to abuse these. With practice you can slip into the right state of mind at will without needing to force it with drugs, lack of sleep, etc.
Take with one hand, give with the other (Score:5, Interesting)
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that's funny. my math grades would usually go up. (vector calc and diffeq, most notably) i used to intentionally deprive myself of sleep before major exams.
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Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
Wierd.. I've only once stayed awake for a whole week.. After 3 days, I started getting auditory hallucinations, after 5, that included visual. Most of the work I was on at that point was next to useless, and there was no guarantee that what went into my head actually made it intact to the paper I was writing on.
Once I'd had sleep after it, and pieced together what I was trying to do and made sense of it all, I salvaged most of it, but hey.. Not a good way to work.
The stresses on the system left me feeling not in such a good way for some time..
Personally, I'd not recommend it for any problem that you wouldn't try to solve by popping a tab of acid.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
I've wondered how much the side effects of sleep deprivation change between different people. I would guess that I'm more sensitive to these side-effects than most - I start getting minor auditory hallucinations after being awake for 16+ hours (not much more than a normal day), and visual effects about 20+ hours in. But then I don't think I could survive more than a couple of days, I hit a really hard brick wall at about 40 hours and can't stay awake. By that stage I've already gone through the temperature changes that they describe in the article.
Although it is a hellish way to work there is something to be said for not having to pick up context repeatedly in a problem. A 24-hr stretch in the office seems to produce about as much work as a standard 40-hr week.
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After spending a year or so staying awake for 5 days at a time almost every week I can tell you that you can get used to it... for me hallucinations started around the 4 day point, by the end of that year they wouldn't kick in until I'd been awake nearly six days.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:4, Interesting)
You do start to hallucinate and become paranoid and unreasonable. Not especially fun. If you are abusing caffeine it is even worse. It's certainly not a good way to work most of the time. I'll agree that it might be something like popping a tab of acid. You get very creative but it will make you very unstable. As I have a family now I try not to get this sleep deprived and I avoid caffeine.
I sometimes have sleep-walking like coding sessions where I produce amazing tricks of code but when you read the code it is almost impossible to figure out why it works. I'd put it on par with trying to figure out why a neural net or genetic algorithm has produced what it has.
I used to do a lot of work with artificial intelligence and methods of indexing and searching massive stacks of information. These problems were usually very non-linear and complex so they weren't something you could just sit down and plan out what logic needed to happen. Code produced while sleep-coding or massively sleep deprived sometimes did stuff I just couldn't explain but it was very interesting and sometimes had results I've not seen duplicated.
The code produced is just bizarre though. It has weird names and is often very much spaghetti code. Sometimes it seems to be inside out. :)
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Funny)
Raped Eye Movement
You managed to spell the rest of your comment correctly, so was this just a Freudian slip or do you want to enlighten us as to the details of this horrific biological state?
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I agree with the other response to this post. I used to be a druggie myself, until one day I finally quit and began putting my life back together. The most I ever did was pot, but even that is enough to harm you. You may say it is safe, it doesn't kill you or cause cancer, but the truth is altering your state of mind isn't good.
I have found being in a clear state of mind these past five years has accelerated my learning and retention more so than doing drugs ever did. I mean, looking back at it now I wish I didn't waste so much time on smoking pot and seeking the next drag, I could have been doing a lot more useful stuff.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Funny)
In the modern world it seems to be macho to go without sleep.
Stop talking like a pussy, boy!
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Funny)
Sleep deprivation also causes you to miss jokes, and often also miss the whooshing noise that occurs after you miss them.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Insightful)
> In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
In reality, there's more to life than being 'at optimal productivity level' all the time. Work to live, not the other way round. If you have an awesome party on your birthday but are a little less productive the day after, then the world can just suck it up. I'm not saying you should drive while (severely) sleep deprived, it's just that there are many things in life that are worth a little sleep deprivation. Just make sure you understand the consequences of sleep deprivation and use that knowledge to act responsibly.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the parent is talking about parties, but people who stay up all night to get a project done. Working more productively means you can spend less time working.
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In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
My own experience has been that a mild level of sleep deprivation increases my productivity since my mind is less resistant to menial tasks. However, and this is very important, when sleep deprived, my rate of learning is much lower. My experience is that when I'm sleep deprived it's my ability to form memories that suffers.
Since ultimately your effectiveness depends much more on how well you've learned than your current mental state, being well rested is of far more value than people give it credit for.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Insightful)
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I really wish people would take the dangers of even small amounts of sleep deprivation more seriously.
Even missing an hours sleep could be enough to kill some poor sod who happens to be crossing the road at the same time as you miss the red lights.
In the modern world it seems to be macho to go without sleep. In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
Then I hope you drive alone, with the radio off, ALWAYS keep your eyes on the road, don't drink alcohol to maintain optimal reaction at all times.
I'm less worried about sleep deprived drivers than I am about the ones who are talking on the phone, texting, fixing their hair, and yelling at their kids while hauling ass behind me in their SUV's.
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Sleep deprivation is a myth. Margaret Thatcher got by with four hours sleep a night, before she went mad.
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Depends on what you're doing instead of sleeping.
Re:If I were sleep deprived (Score:5, Funny)
There's a whole new meaning to being dead tired...
Ah...... (Score:5, Funny)
But did they feed the rats Jolt?
It keeps me alive!
Now if I can just do something about those damned bats...
Re:Ah...... (Score:5, Funny)
Too much Red Bull gives you Wings, And a halo.
Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the voluntary all-night hack-a-thons that society needs to worry about. It's the insistence by employers that their staff work all night, because of deadline screwups by management, or by the requirement that staff have to do on-call, rather than employing people specifically for night shifts.
I wouldn't lose any sleep at all, if it wasn't for idiotic decisions by my employer.
Re:Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there are some Really, Really good reasons for certain individuals to be 'on-call'. However, the result of on-call actions should have the commensurate benefit of having additional time off to recover from those over night sessions.
If THAT happened more often, people would be far more willing to do on-call.
SRSLY.
Re:Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:5, Funny)
Lalalalala, I can't hear you, lalalalalala!
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I used to be on-call a few years ago. We had a pager rotation from Thursday to Thursday followed by Friday off.
It was awesome since I could start the weekends early. Go to the movies on Friday at discount price (until 1pm or something) in an empty theatre was great. I would regularly take the following Monday off, getting a 4 days vacation and avoiding all the weekend traffic out of the bay area.
Nowadays ... I have not taken a single day of vacation in the past 10 months. I swear Once I buy that house I wan
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Re:Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
We are all slaves to the god Motorola. My wife once asked why the pager had to make such a shrill tone. Told her it was designed that way for a reason.
Re:Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm. The real problem is, that you can not go somewhere else when stuff like that happens. Usually they all are that way. And usually they can just reject you and not care, while you can not do the same.
That's why unions came up. Unfortunately it turned out being something not exactly as good as intended. ^^
Try a lightweight Hollywood model. That is, when everybody is self-employed, and you can have multiple "bosses"/clients and can always hire your own employees/businesses. Lightweight would mean, to do it, but to group with those bosses/clients/employees/businesses in a kind of "company" that lets you cut down on the administration and tax work, while still being just as free in everything else. Then you could easily say "no" to one boss/client, and choose to do work for the other one.
Re:Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because the Republican administrations since Reagan did everything they can to destroy labor unions.
The only reason the US has a middle class at all is because of organized labor. If the industrialists in the first few decades of the 20th century had gotten their way, workers in the US would be about where workers in Mexico currently find themselves. We'd probably all be trying to sneak into Canada.
You really have to be ignorant of US history not to realize the importance of the labor movement. By the way, since the all-out attack on unions started, real income of American middle and lower-class workers has declined at a steady rate. If it hadn't been the ready availability of easy credit, our standard of living would have plummeted. Now that the bill's coming due you're going to see very clearly what damage anti-union policies have done.
mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
It's refreshing to read some intelligent commentary about unions on this page rather than the typical knee-jerk anti-union comments that generally get attention.
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You really have to be ignorant of US history not to realize the importance of the labor movement. By the way, since the all-out attack on unions started, real income of American middle and lower-class workers has declined at a steady rate. If it hadn't been the ready availability of easy credit, our standard of living would have plummeted. Now that the bill's coming due you're going to see very clearly what damage anti-union policies have done.
Unfortunately, my history classes rarely made it to the 20th century, and it might have been 1 class session, if that. I would have loved to know more about the 20th century. FYI, yes, I went to public schools. The sad part is that I haven't done much to fill that gap in my knowledge besides watching the History channel. I do see value in labor unions, but I probably don't have the historical knowledge to fully appreciate their role in history.
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Yeah....it must be the unions. Can't have anything to do with the fact that on the whole, non-americans consider cars made by GM, Chrysler etc. to be big ugly unreliable inefficient heaps of crap. That can't go around corners.
Not really. I don't know about the rest of the world, but as far as Europe goes, GM doesn't really have that bad reputation.
This is probably because GM's European line-up (mainly Vauxhalls/Opels, along with Saabs and some ex-Daewoos that are now marketed as "Chevrolet") is quite different to the much-maligned models sold in the US. Not saying that they're all considered the best in their class, or that everyone loves them, but- like most manufacturers nowadays- their European cars probably go from "reason
Re:Hack-a-thons? No. (Score:4, Interesting)
Forced overtime can certainly be bad for your health. But I don't think a few allnighters are going to kill you outright. They might shorten your life a bit.
And some gamers do play themselves to death. That actually happened at small colo provider where I used to work. They often sponsored LAN parties, and once a guy who'd apparently already been awake for a couple days showed up and played continuously for about 24 hours. Then he stood up, walked out to the parking lot, and dropped dead.
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Uh, no. Even if be had lived, what were his chances of reproducing?
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I was at a company that did that. Everyone was told to stay until midnight on a Saturday to meet the deadline. At 6:00pm I walked out the door. The boss tried to stop me, but I told him the truth: "I'm a consultant, you only paid for eight hours. See you Monday morning."
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An occassional lack of sleep isn't the problem, it's the permanent lack of sleep that's the problem.
And yes - you can die from it. Either by having an accident or because the brain actually isn't able to recover itself as it should.
There is a rare disease that shuts off the ability for the brain to go into sleep and that will make a wreck of the victim and after a few months there will be death. Fatal Familial Insomnia [wikipedia.org] is the sickness.
Lack of sleep IS dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
According to a reliable source [memory-alpha.org], a lack of REM sleep in a group of people will cause them to go crazy and start murdering each other...
Re:Lack of sleep IS dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
Death from too much work/too little sleep is so popular in Japan, that they have a nice name for it here - karoshi.
Which, surprisingly, translates literally to "death from too much work".
Re:Lack of sleep IS dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
I'm never going to understand Asian tastes...
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Well, since you're obviously an unpatriotic Taiwanese, ...
Oh, sorry. I got caught up in the scrum. Never mind.
Re:Lack of sleep IS dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they call it "death from overwork," but I've rarely seen Japanese salarymen work in the way that I would consider "work." I have decided that the Japanese concept of work has little to do with measurable results and a lot to do with how awful the process was and how long it took.
When the culture puts a lot of value on suffering for your employer, it's no wonder that some people push themselves to suffer so much that it literally kills them. When you live on cigarettes, One Cup single-serving sake, and vending-machine coffee; when you are getting a couple hours of sleep a night, tops; when you are spending 3 hours of your waking day running after trains and then being crammed into them with the other exhausted, smelly people; when you continue this lifestyle for years on end; yeah, you're going to die. And you probably won't even have that many results to show for it.
So much of the "work" that Japanese companies have people do is just kind of meaningless activity. All it does is exhaust people and turn bright, energetic college kids into the dead shells you see riding the train (full disclosure: I'm a university teacher in Japan).
There seems to be a growing movement in Japanese society, however, that is realizing this and pushing back. The economic downturn is helping, too. It used to be that once you landed a job, you were set for life. However, if you ever got fired or downsized, you were screwed for life; no one would ever hire you again. You were damaged goods. Now, the latter is still true, but the former isn't. People get laid off all the time now. Last year a few major companies hired a bunch of new college graduates, those people turned down other offers, and then the companies came back and retracted their offers and paid them about $5k to go away. These people are now both never employed and damaged goods. Hiring only happens once a year here, so they were basically paid $5k to live on for the next year of their lives, after which they got to do the whole grueling interviewing and testing process again, this time with a lingering question about their CV: "Why was this person cut at the last minute by the other company?"
So all of this is building up what I--and any other Western person, who is used to crap like this--can only call a healthy cynicism about employers, and a rejection of their bullshit in favor of an easier life with fewer problems. Temp agencies are taking over as they have done in the US, etc., with all of the bullshit, but all of the benefits as well. I did IT temp work before becoming an academic, and although the lack of security really was pretty scary, the pay was good and the hours were great. I wasn't a salary slave like I am now. Oh, and guess what? Tenure is getting harder to get, so I'm on a year contract anyway! Nothing has changed. Security is dead. Fuck the companies and live your life!
I am hopeful that we here in Japan will see less karoshi as the new generation takes over--the new generation who sees that it's possible to live without being a slave to a company--and that the difficult economic conditions force companies to cut out nonessential make-work activities, increasing efficiency, and evaluating people on what they get done, not how late they stay.
Sleep and lifestyle are important, folks. Don't forget that quality of life is the only thing you should be worried about, because you only get one. If you're having fun staying up all night working (because you might be!) then great! But if you don't like it, don't do it.
I sleep at least 8 hours a night. I am one of the most productive people I know. I'm not interested in dying for my job.
When dreams are shattered... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with some of your statements, but a lot of your rant was (dis)coloured by the typical attitude of 'Foreigner in Japan' syndrome: which is that the Japanese way is not the same as my way, therefore it is inferior.
Many of my gaijin acquaintances in Japan do nothing but complain about the place, yet whenever I ask them if they've forgotten the correct route to the airport, they clam up and don't speak to me for a while.
Almost all of them came to Japan for at least one of the four main reasons foreigner
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So you're of the opinion that it isn't possible to live in a place, like a place, and yet still find fault with the way said place does things?
I live in the UK. I enjoy living in the UK. Given an opportunity to live anywhere in the world, there's a decent chance I'd choose the UK. But I know sure as hell that there is A LOT wrong with the place, and that I'd be remiss (read: a complete tool) not to my best as a citizen to right these wrongs- or at the very least acknowledge that they exist.
Japan (full discl
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're only slightly wrong, as in 3 of 3.
ka - over, excessive
rou - labor, work
shi - death,
all borrowed from our Chinese overlords.
In glorious Japanese, here: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%81%8E%E5%8A%B4%E6%AD%BB [wikipedia.org]
Rats make for lousy test subjects (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rats make for lousy test subjects (Score:5, Insightful)
Calorie restriction, or caloric restriction (CR), is a dietary regimen thought to improve health and slow the aging process in some animals
CR is a case where animal models are even less applicable than usual. Humans are tuned up for obvious evolutionary reasons to live about twice as long as one would normally expect for a mammal, well beyond our effective reproductive lifespan.
The average mammal lives about a billion heartbeats. Humans live twice that--way off the scale. Ergo, assuming that life extension techniques that work on other animals will work on us is problematic to say the least.
One of the mechanisms that has been optimized by evolutionary selection in humans to extend our lives is our extreme resistantance to cancer, which is why animal models for cancer (both causes and cures) have been so problematic over the past few decades.
Rats are nocturnal social scavengers, which may make them a better model for sleep research than cancer research, but given how weird the human brain is compared to most other animals it is again quite problematic to simply extrapolate any conclusions from them to us.
"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who thinks this is shocking.
We need water. Would you be shocked to find a lack of water can be deadly?
Why would anyone be shocked to find lack of sleep can kill?
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would certainly be a lot more helpful to have specifics about what sleep provides that we require versus, say, a rest while conscious.
Water is a good example, where it's thoroughly understood just how our body uses it, i.e. what role hydration plays in our continued functioning.
What is it specifically that requires us to lose consciousness to get what we need from sleep? Can it be artificially supplemented?
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the biggest thing you need sooner or later is REM sleep, not just a lie down. Lack of REM sleep (which, as we'll see is possible while technically still getting some sleep) can result in actual brain damage, or in the very long run even death. (Ironically, it's also produced _by_ certain kinds of brain damage.) Also, while we still lack the complete picture, it's proven that at least one type of memory isn't updated without REM.
REM sleep also doesn't come instantly. In most people you need at least 90 minutes from falling asleep to having your first REM period. Anything under about half an hour is a sign of narcolepsy. Your longest REM episodes happen after several hours.
On the average over a whole night, about a quarter of the time will be REM. It's safe to assume that in the long run those two hours or so of REM a day are what your body actually needs.
But again, you don't get them in one big chunk. You get them interleaved with periods of non-REM sleep. So what it boils down to is that to get your normal quota of REM sleep, you'll actually need those 8 hours a night. You might get by with just 7, but anything less (unless you're over 70) is putting stress on your brain in the long run. You might not outright die, but you won't be very smart or attentive after months of getting significantly less.
But if you know how to get that REM while awake instead, I'm listening.
Because otherwise, no, you can't get your daily sleep by laying down on the couch for half an hour. You need to actually sleep. Not even from having the occasional half an hour nap. You just don't reach REM that fast, unless you're narcoleptic.
Which also brings us to: if whatever project or job actually makes you ask yourself if you could get by with just a lie down now and then, well, ask yourself if it's worth the problems in the longer run. Again, even if you don't outright reach the death point, you _will_ lose neurons, and that tends to be fairly permanent. You might also get other problems too.
And if you're the employer, well, ask yourself if you want to be an evil fuck. We're not talking just greedy, or just pushing them a little harder, but actual long term damage. If actual harm to some people is a perfectly acceptable trade off for a few more bucks in your (or the company's) pocket, that's comfortably in the zone I'd call outright evil.
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gotta say that was a very long post that repeated a lot of conventional wisdom but said almost nothing to answer OP's question...
"What is it specifically that requires us to lose consciousness to get what we need from sleep?"
From a neurobiological perspective that will not be answered satisfactorily until we know at a basic biochemical level what happens during sleep to "recharge" the brain to its normal function.
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent asks:
"Gotta say that was a very long post that repeated a lot of conventional wisdom but said almost nothing to answer OP's question..."
"What is it specifically that requires us to lose consciousness to get what we need from sleep?"
The grandparent post answered that question with:
"I think the biggest thing you need sooner or later is REM sleep, not just a lie down. Lack of REM sleep (which, as we'll see is possible while technically still getting some sleep) can result in actual brain damage, or in the very long run even death."
Sure he didn't say "The thing that specifically requires us to lose concious to get what we need from sleep is REM sleep", but he did answer the question.
Research disagrees.. (Score:4, Informative)
I disagree with your assertion that you need 8 hours to get the required REM sleep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep [wikipedia.org]
Some people have been shown to get 3 hours sleep per day, in 30 minute regulated naps and not go insane (or die) even after 6 months.
The issue comes when your body does not know when it should be getting the sleep. If you have irregular patterns, then you will suffer. If you have a sleep pattern that is as regular as clockwork, I would suggest that to survive you body would adapt and quite happily live on 6 hours, just run the REM cycles closer together.
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm on first name basis with my sleep doctor. And why not? I put his kids through college. According to him, REM sleep is pretty much garbage sleep - you don't need it at all. In fact there are some drugs that suppress that stage of sleep, and they seem to have no effect on overall well being. Sleep doctors have quantified four different stages of sleep based on EEG readouts, and it turns out what you must have is a few hours of stage 4 sleep, though what that means beyond being the deepest kind of sleep I'm not sure. I can tell you from personal experience lack of stage 4 sleep causes all sorts of problems, from hypertension to memory loss to anxiety attacks.
It's a bit off topic, but if you're suffering from anxiety attacks make sure you get a sleep study done before you go on an SSRI. You could save yourself a whole lot of heartache.
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But if you know how to get that REM while awake instead, I'm listening.
I'd imagine it would be rather uncomfortable what with your eyes rapidly moving around and making everything wiggly.
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lovely dreams, dramatic nightmares, improved performance, elevated mood, enhanced creativity and better health.
If someone tells you they only sleep 6 hours per night, you can bet their either lying or deteriorating.
After I got married and my daughter got beyond infancy, I started knocking off a little earlier in the evening and getting at least eight hours of sleep per night. I have found, to my great delight, that I have much more energy than I did when I was 25 and staying out 'til "last call" every night. I also learned that I can be more productive between 6am and 9am than I used to be all day.
But one of the best benefits to longer sleep is the growth of my dream life. Because I reliably remember my dreams now, I've learned to have lucid dreams and have come to really look forward to even the most horrific nightmares. For some reason, I've found that when I have one of those crazy, terrifying dreams where I practically wake up screaming, clasping the bedpost or pillow, I have particularly good days afterward.
Maybe this is because I make a living in the arts and imagination, lucidity and other right-brain activities are my stock in trade, but I've got non-artist friends who saw the change in me and have started getting a little more sleep and they've seen dramatic improvements too.
I think the key to this change, though, may have been getting married and having a happy marriage. I don't have the need to be out late every night in a desperate search for pussy. I used to be always looking for "something" without really knowing what (or who) it was. Now, most everything I'm looking for in life is either at home or in my head.
If your job requires you to give up sleep, you have to be aware that you're paying a very high price and you might not notice that price until your body (or mind) complains to you in an unpleasant way. Lost sleep is not something you can easily retrieve.
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I don't have the need to be out late every night in a desperate search for pussy.
You should keep your cat indoors. And anyway, they attack the native wildlife if you let them out at night.
(What do you mean "Slashdot nerd"? I don't understand.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, I seem to recall a study claiming that 6.5 hours of sleep per day is considered optimal, at least with respect to longevity.
I do just fine with some 6 hours of sleep on average, and have done so for the best part of my life. Even my parents say I've always slept less than normal kids, and much less than my sister, who on one occasion slept for 23 hours, got up for an hour, then went back to sleep.
BTW she's doing just fine, too, though now that she has a daughter, she does not tend to sleep much.
M
Re:"Shockingly"?? (Score:5, Informative)
The next question is, what does REM sleep bring? It's commonly believed to be the required / most beneficial part of a person's sleep, but what specifically occurs during that period to, for example, update the type of memory you mention?
No, the most essential type of sleep is slow-wave sleep, which is even mentioned [nytimes.com] in TFA.
I've done some computational modelling of the cerebral cortex, and my hypothesis [bigpond.net.au] (page 7/139) is that slow-wave sleep is used to re-strengthen competitive connections between cortical columns, restoring the ability to think clearly.
World Record (Score:5, Informative)
Re:World Record (Score:4, Informative)
The current world record for time without sleep is 11 days.
Tied with [dailyradar.com] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, I'm guessing.
It can do it to cats (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading some time ago (in the 1970's) of some research that was already old then (1950's?), about sleep deprivation literally killing cats. (Who would do such research is not clear, but looking back on things I suspect a military connection.)
This must be available in some public archive, if anyone cares to hunt for it.
Re:It can do it to cats (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure about which experiment you are referencing... but the 'Who would do this comment' nearly made me snarf a nose-full of green-tea.
I thought this was a joke first time I heard it referenced on an NPR gameshow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Odd that it would happen to be green tea. Back when tea started to get popular in England, there was a person who wanted to convince people that green tea was deadly. He did this by preparing green tea at ridiculously high concentration and having cats drink it. Not surprisingly, the cats died.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I remember reading some time ago (in the 1970's) of some research that was already old then (1950's?), about sleep deprivation literally killing cats.
Anybody who can keep a cat awake deserves a Nobel Prize.
Depends what you're doing (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago I was working on a project to export data from a fancy survey instrument. After working at my office all day, I started work on the survey project in my basement around 5pm on a Friday night and worked on it for a while and had a wonderful time and everything was coming together nicely. After a while I suddenly felt sick; thought I might have to lie down or something. I then noticed that it was about 7pm on Sunday night. I hadn't noticed until then. That's why I was suddenly sick.
It's one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. I subsequently felt much better after having a meal and a nap.
I guess that if something is sufficiently interesting and so on, you won't notice that you haven't had any sleep for quite some period of time.
Re:Depends what you're doing (Score:5, Funny)
After working at my office all day, I started work on the survey project in my basement around 5pm on a Friday night and worked on it for a while and had a wonderful time
You make slashdot proud.
This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
That article about "ground breaking experiments" is from 1997. I'm trying to remember when I read the story about Rechtschaffen's experiments the first time, and it is entirely possible that it was a /. story then too, which would make this a dup. This story is hardly news.
Sure about that? (Score:3, Informative)
There was a programme on TV the other week about some guy in Canada who's been awake for about 3 years, using some experimental drug (that they named, but I forget about it other than I discovered it was illegal in this country).
He didn't seem to be dead. Could have been a zombie, I guess.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
[citation needed]
Re:Sure about that? (Score:4, Funny)
[citation needed]
It was a programme on TV the other week about some guy in Canada and an experimental drug with a name of some sort. What more do you need???
It's coming to something when.. (Score:5, Informative)
It's coming to something when even the submitters can't be bothered RTFA. All night hackathons are not going to kill you:
So unless you work 32 days straight, you're not going to die.
Sorta (Score:5, Informative)
Sorta. After 32 days the damage got to be deadly. It doesn't mean you can't get smaller doses of damage long before that. Keep doing it often enough, and it might just add up.
And the darndest thing is that your cells have Telomeres [wikipedia.org], i.e., maximum division counters. So even damage that can be repaired, only goes so far. E.g., old age and death by old age, are simply a matter of more and more of your cells reaching the limit, and thus more and more damage can't be repaired. So, anyway, that which doesn't kill you, usually shortens your life instead of making you stronger.
Sorta if you will, like saying that you need a whole 0.45% alcohol in your blood to have a 50-50 chance of death. Yeah, but much smaller doses, if done often enough, can kill you just the same.
And to answer to your objection from a different message too, yes, 1 or 2 nights you can recover from. (Though if done for work reason, it may still be interesting to remember the study where the students who were allowed to have a good 8 hour sleep solved a problem actually faster than those who pulled all nighters. You're a lot less smart when very tired.) After about 3 you start getting permanent brain damage.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sorta. After 32 days the damage got to be deadly.
Most of the damage to the rats was likely due to extremely high levels of stress and not actual sleep deprivation
you will die from one night of not sleeping (Score:5, Insightful)
If you die from 1 all-nighter then you probably died from something else (very poor health). I think most of science and engineering have been built on all-nighters so sorry, not going to stop.
This is news? (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you Captain Obvious! (Score:4, Funny)
Is there anyone here who seriously thought that it would be even remotely related to ok, to not sleep for several days?
Not only does it make you stupid as hell, and depressed. Your brain also starts to fail more and more. Even if you do not die, you will not be far away from a zombie.
Hope you do not run up to me in that state, because I am going to shoot you. I don't take risks zombies. Zombies and raptors. Especially zombie raptors. ^^
What's the LD50? (Score:4, Funny)
What's the LD50?
pain sensitivity (Score:5, Interesting)
I once went 9 days without sleep. After 22 hours of sleep I woke up in severe pain, as an injury I had suffered halfway through, which seemed very mild in my sensory-depressed state, was in fact something that required medical attention. If it had been only a tiny bit worse, I could have developed life-threatening complications after several days of ignoring and aggravating it. Impaired motor control, pain sensitivity, awareness, and judgment, all at the same time, is a dangerous combination.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I once went 40 hours without sleep.
Now I find time for a 1.5h nap if I don't get to sleep at night. It really helps a ton, and will get you through to the next night.
After skipping sleep one night, I usually get 10 hours the next, and wake up a bit tired.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad was in the tail end of WWII, and the most he or others in his unit could do was three days without sleep. After that you start to hallucinate. Guns and hallucinations do not mix.
Sleep deprivation is very serious (Score:5, Interesting)
In my early thirties I started snoring a lot, and very heavily. Two years later I started experiencing symptoms such as forgetting where I was going as I driving down the road, getting into my vehicle and not remembering how to start it, forgetting my own phone number, the inability to perform my job at any level of competency, etc.... I thought I had suffered a major stroke.
I went to the doctor and he said I was a ringer for sleep apnea and referred me to a sleep clinic.
Long story short I was waking 50 times an hour because that's how often my breathing was being interrupted and my body would rouse me due to low oxygen levels in my blood. To me it seemed as if I was awake all night long and never went to sleep.
After being fitted with a cpap mask and sleep machine to pump air into my mouth and nose while I slept it took me three weeks of normal sleep to recover my mental faculties.
Sleep deprivation will kill you, and it will also seriously degrade your mental capabilities. It's nothing to mess around with. In addition to the mental problems the probability of a stroke or heart attack is greatly amplified.
Re:Sleep deprivation is very serious (Score:4, Interesting)
I have done multiple instances of 7 days without sleep over the years - that's about my limit. Currently I have a regime of around 5 hours per night (over the last 10 years).. At Uni I regularly used to work 9am - 6pm, break, then 11pm to 6am, then break, for months at a time.
My point is that nothing, NOTHING, prepares you for the level of sleep deprivation that you suffer when you have kids. Strategies for dealing with a 3-year old who is heavily into animals, space and big machines, anyone?
Re:Sleep deprivation is very serious (Score:5, Interesting)
For the previous couple years, my performance at work was falling off, and I was constantly flirting with burn-out. I was getting poor performance reviews and couldn't figure out why. I thought one of my problems was that my hearing was going, so I got fitted with hearing aids (I also suffer from mild hearing loss - more on that near the end of this story.)
My work performance improved slightly, but something else was going on. For some time, my wife had complained about my snoring. It was so bad that we were sleeping in separate rooms.
Sure, I was always tired, but I thought that was normal. It sneaks up on you. A parallel example would be that you can't specify a date when your eyesight got bad enough that you first needed glasses. You might be able to recall the date you got your first set of glasses though.
I had received as a gift an MP3 player that could also record 4 hours of sound in one take. About 2 years after receiving my hearing aids, I decided to record myself at night. That recording was extremely enlightening. Life changing enlightening. Based on that recording alone, I was convinced I had a breathing problem while trying to sleep. It was extremely uncomfortable listening to myself struggling to breath. If my wife had made such a recording years before, I would have acted in it then. Unfortunately, all she did was complain about it, and wake me up when I was snoring.
A week later I spent the night in a sleep lab and was diagnosed with sleep apnea. After another night in the lab, I had a prescription for a CPAP machine (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, Pressure=8cm water). This is essentially a low pressure blower that (in my case) gently inflates my lungs without any effort on my part. I have to exhale against the pressure, but its less than blowing up a balloon. I find the experience relaxing. Humans are much stronger at exhaling than they are inhaling.
After a month of using the machine, I started feeling a lot better (you don't recover from the long term sleep debt in one night - 2 to 6 weeks seems to be common). For about the next week, I was really angry about how I had been treated at work (I suspect this is a common effect following treatment for a wide range of medical disorders such as waking from a coma.)
About that time, I lost my job due to poor performance. (The performance issues were real, but the reasons they cited for my release were bogus - they gave me a problem that could not be resolved within the framework I was allowed to work in.)
I wonder at the obituaries in the newspapers. The cause of death is often given as natural causes, but I suspect many are really breathing issues related to snoring.
After starting CPAP therapy, I found that perhaps 5-10% of the people about me use CPAPs, and found about others second hand. Two people I know have started CPAP therapy in the last year. CPAP machines may be much more common than the general population is aware.
I'll likely continue using the CPAP for the rest of my life. Surgical options don't always work, can not be undone, and are often not permanent anyway. CPAP therapy always works, and can be easily adjusted.
I still wear hearing aids, but I find that I don't need them all the time like I used to. The hearing loss is real. I frequently wear them turned off (the sound of my own typing drives me up the wall) and turn them on when needed. I suspect my brain is still recovering from years of sleep apnea, but it is improving.
Not much of a threat (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't this is something that happens often under circumstances people normally experience.
First if it was we would already know and not need to be doing the research now, to find out if can be lethal.
Second nature probably has its methods of preventing you from killing yourself in this fashion no matter how dumb you are about trying to stay up.
You usually cannot hold your breath until you die. You might be able to do it with some contrivance like a plastic bag tied around your neck or noose, but if you just sit there in your chair and attempt to hold your breath you will pass out before you die and start breathing automatically when that happens.
I suspect you can't keep yourself awake long enough to die either without getting pretty darn creative.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True, the context of the original article on Slate was the "enhanced interrogation techniques" practiced by the US on captured terrorists. According to the recently released memos interrogators were allowed to deprive subjects of sleep for up to 180 hours (7.5 days). The starting technique was to shackle them in a standing position so that if they fell asleep, their entire weight was born on their arms. After fort
You bet your life (Score:5, Interesting)
Shenanigans! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me be the first to call shenanigans on this.
Any studies on the harmfulness of sleep deprivation are so horribly confounded as to be practically useless.
The problem lies in the fact that in order to deprive rats of sleep you have to apply some kind of aversive stimulus to disrupt their sleep. Not only that, but the more tired an animal gets, the stronger the aversive stimuli needed to keep them awake. These aversive stimuli cause stress, and we already know that chronic, unavoidable stressors can kill.
So how can they make the attribution to lack of sleep rather than to stress? There's no simple way to separate them.
One of the articles even states that one of the physiological results of lack of sleep is an increase of cortisol and TSH - *BOTH* of which are known effects of stress. I would rather say that the physiological results they are seeing have been caused by the stressors they are applying to keep the animals awake than the lack of sleep.
Shenanigans I say, shenanigans.
Anybody with young children... (Score:4, Insightful)
...understand the joys of lack of sleep for extended periods. You have periods - sometimes weeks on end - where you get interrupted every couple of hours, which means you're not getting much, if any, REM sleep. I know of other parents who say that with multiple young children they have periods of YEARS where everything is just a bit hazy.
There has been some research (can't remember where I saw it) that sleep is vital for moving the day's memories from short term memory into long term memory where it can be accessed. Extended lack of sleep means that new information isn't properly transferred into the cortex and so gets "overwritten" with fresh information, resulting in some memory loss.
someone that hasn't slept in 33 yrs (Score:3, Interesting)
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Man_in_Vietnam_hasn [digg.com]â(TM)t_slept_in_33_years._2
It won't pull up the story right now but I recall reading it. Apparently he got some illness and it led to some very specific brain damage, (by fever?) and prevented him from ever being able to sleep again. The article said he used the nighttime over the course of several years to dig a pond to raise fish to supplement the family's income. You'd think this guy would be the subject of intense research by a variety of groups, civilian and military alike?
Can't sleep (Score:4, Funny)
Clown will eat me.
Sleep Apnea (Score:5, Informative)
One just has to look at anyone with untreated sleep apnea to see just how dangerous it is. You can easily identify such people just by looking for the signs... darkened eye sockets, labored breathing, swelling of the legs and body, disorientation, lethargy and bruising.
And it's not just difficulty sleeping either, the body ends up literally consuming more energy trying to sleep than it does while conscious. The lack of oxygen in the circulatory system fools the body into overproduction of red blood cells to compensate. This, in turn, leads to a dangerous shift in blood pressure to the point that the heart may cease to function under the load (chronic-conjestive lung and heart failure).
In many cases, those suffering from it are often discovered with blood oxygen levels lower than that of a cadaver.
One thing to remember though, is that the act of sleeping isn't just merely closing the eyes for a few winks, the body *needs* to rest lying down to recover from the negative effects of being upright all day. Blood that is left to pool in the legs for too long can eventually lead to dangerous blood clots.
At the very least, if you can't afford to sleep regularly, try taking a brief nap lying down once every few hours to help maintain normal circulation.
My sleep story, how about yours? (Score:5, Funny)
I had a night job at a factory one time. 11pm to 7am. This meant that I slept about every two days.
I had a beekeeping hobby during the off factory hours. Can't put those little critters off. Once I was so sleepy I gathered a swarm into a box on the top of a 10' ladder. Then took a good nap up there with the idea or waiting for the bees to move to my box. Woke up a couple of hours later to an unpleasant dream which turned out to be reality. I had slept through a few bee stings. The swarm had moved, not into the box, but over and into my bee netting, clothes, hair, face, etc.
It was just annoying because swarms are fairly placid. So I carefully pulled my bee covered bee netting off and put that in the box. Went and took a proper nap in a bed.
You folks do anything interesting while sleep deprived? Leave out anything that could get you into trouble.
From a psychological point of view... (Score:3, Informative)