Inadequate sleep can increase the risk of many health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and depression
Randy Gardner, 17, went without sleeping for 11 days and 25 minutes at a high school science fair project in California in 1963, setting the world record for the longest time a person stayed awake, according to Live Science.
Reportedly, other people have broken that record — Robert MacDonald went 18 days and nearly 22 hours without sleep in 1986 — but none were monitored as closely or by a doctor as Gardner’s case.
Latent risks
Guinness World Records no longer covers this feat. In 1997, the Encyclopedia stopped accepting new submissions because of “the inherent dangers associated with sleep deprivation.” And then comes to mind questions regarding what are these dangers? What happens to people who suffer from prolonged sleep deprivation?
Sleep is essential for executive, emotional, and physical functions, and insufficient sleep can increase your risk of many health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Experts say that humans need a consistent 6 to 8 hours of sleep in the same period every 24 hours. Thus it is not uncommon for people, especially students, to remain sleepless all night and stay awake for 24 hours.
Partial sleep
In this stage of sleep deprivation, it may be difficult to distinguish between sleep and wakefulness, said Dr. Oren Cohen, a sleep medicine fellow at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Dr. Cohen added that when someone starts to stay awake for 24 hours without sleep, their brain activity is already showing signs that they are on the verge of being asleep and awake, even though they appear to be awake. This condition is called sleep intrusion or partial sleep.
People who skip hours of sleep appear awake, but their brains involuntarily go into a type of abnormal sleep, which can include periods of inattention or hallucinations, said Dr. Alon Avidan, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at UCLA.
psychological torture
Dr. Cohen added that it cannot be “believed that someone might stay awake for more than 24 hours without these episodes of hallucinations and inattention.”
It’s also difficult to say exactly how long people can go without sleep and the timeline for side effects that unfold. Dr. Avedon said that chronic sleep deprivation, when an individual does not sleep for a prolonged period, is so devastating that it is unethical to research it in humans, and it has even been used as a form of psychological torture.
Rare genetic disease
Although prolonged sleep deprivation cannot be studied, there is data on people with a rare genetic disease called fatal familial insomnia (FFI). These patients have a genetic mutation that causes an abnormal protein to build up in the brain and gradually worsens sleep. Their bodies begin to deteriorate and they eventually die because the abnormal protein builds up and damages brain cells. The disorder kills most patients within 18 months, on average. While a study conducted on rats in 1989 showed that animals who did not sleep for a period of 11 to 32 days lead to their death.
A 2019 study published in the journal Nature and Science of Sleep found that participants’ wakefulness, which was relatively normal, lasted up to 16 hours. But following 16 hours, the rate of attention lapses increased significantly, and it was worse for the participants, who had chronic insomnia. Results of a 2000 study revealed that staying awake for 24 hours reduces hand-eye coordination equally. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the effects of 24-hour sleep deprivation included reduced reaction time, slurred speech, impaired decision-making, decline in memory and attention, irritability, visual impairment, hearing and hand-eye coordination, and tremors.
Inflammation in the blood and hormonal imbalance
The Cleveland Clinic reports that within 36 hours, sleep-deprived people can have increased markers of inflammation in their blood and even develop hormonal imbalances and a slowed metabolism. There is very little research on what happens in 72 hours, but people can experience anxiety, depression, hallucinations, and problems with executive function.
Research, conducted on US physicians, shows that poor sleep increases fatigue and self-reported medical error. According to a 2021 study published in the Journal of Medical Education, night shift workers are also at high risk for the consequences of poor sleep because they tend to get insufficient sleep, are not always able to fall asleep at the same time, and must often sleep with the lights on. , which contradicts the normal human wake-sleep cycle.
Compensation for sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation cannot be compensated for tomorrow or over the weekend. Sleep deprivation is cumulative, so those who don’t sleep incur a kind of sleep debt. Dr. Avedon said that for every hour of sleep lost, it takes a full 8 hours of sleep to recover.
Not getting enough sleep is also risky for another reason, which is that although the effect on attention can be severe, it may not be noticed by the person themselves, just as someone under the influence of alcohol may think they are fine and can drive safely, they Someone who gets limited sleep can feel complacent, or, as Dr. Cohen puts it, they basically don’t know they’re facing attention gaps.