What Happens to the Body on No Sleep • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#41

Post by glaive123 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 1:55 AM UTC

theatraine wrote: post #11

There seems to be quite a lot of information about why =8 hours is associated with increased mortality. See for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29790200 (an interesting study in itself). I read "Why We Sleep" but unfortunately it didn't answer this question. The association could be correlational but it's been replicated too many times for me to believe that there's not something more fundamental. Perhaps…

This is a great question.

As others said, the data is contaminated. Likely people who are sick sleep a lot more.

That said, I'm one of those people (healthy, I think) who sleeps 9-14 hours every day. My goal every night is to sleep as long as I possibly can. Nights when I only hit 9 hours is usually because I had to get up to go the bathroom.

I have Sleep Apnea but treat it with a CPAP and went from 20 awakenings per HOUR to just 0 to 2 per NIGHT. But the amount I need to sleep hasn't changed for some reason. I definitely feel dramatically more rested after sleep than I used to though.

I started using AutoSleep app with Apple Watch Series 4 and it's been incredibly interesting. It uses your heart rate to automatically track sleep without you touching the app. So far, I vary from 15 minutes to 1 hour of stage 4 deep sleep per night. The average person needs 1.5-2 hours per night so I am not hitting that. My recent 6 day average is 30 minutes. There is barely a relationship between length of sleep and amount of deep sleep. Just this week I had one night with 6 hours and one night with 11 hours, both totaled 15 minutes of deep sleep.

I'd love to compare notes with someone else who uses the AutoSleep app.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#42

Post by CamelCaseName » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

jeffshek wrote: post #19

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be really good at this. I would wake up with answers, first thought in the morning! But as I have gotten older, the "working on it" dreams have become disruptive and my sleep less sound when processing some problem.

Joshua Waitzkin has an interesting perspective on this. He will take an idea, keep it in his hold, and then make sure he lets go of the focus a few hours before bedtime. IE. Do something with family instead. Subconscious brain still works on it, but still able to sleep well. Not sure if this would be applicable.

Very interesting!

In high school, I would often "retell" the day in my mind, usually right before bed. More often than not, I would wake up with the solutions to problems I struggled with.

I have been trying to recreate this as an adult, except now I'm retelling the story of my day to my wife and vice versa.

Maybe the key is to do it earlier in the evening, and then disconnect for a few hours? I'll give it a shot.

Between lucid dreaming and solving problems overnight, sleeping was never better than in my high school years. I really do wish I could go back to that.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#43

Post by o10449366 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

ping_pong wrote: post #32

o10449366 wrote: post #6

I was born with chronic insomnia and I'm now in my early 30s. I never feel sleepy and just this past Monday I went to work having not slept the night before. I'm healthy now and I guess my body is so used to the effects of sleep deprivation that I feel no side effects (such as headaches), but I wouldn't be surprised if I die very young. If you have any questions feel free to ask them, just please don't suggest I try…

Do you sleep at all, or do you just sleep very little?

Very little, but it isn't uncommon for me once a week or every other week to go a full night with no sleep at all.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#44

Post by wave100 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

Reading this before having to pull an all-nighter for the two exams I have tomorrow may not have been the best idea.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#45

Post by xyzzyz » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

theatraine wrote: post #11

There seems to be quite a lot of information about why =8 hours is associated with increased mortality. See for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29790200 (an interesting study in itself). I read "Why We Sleep" but unfortunately it didn't answer this question. The association could be correlational but it's been replicated too many times for me to believe that there's not something more fundamental. Perhaps…

Maybe sick people just stay in bed more, which leads to sleeping more?

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#46

Post by johnday » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

sysbin wrote: post #34

I achieved what I can only describe as pure euphoria while going without sleep for extended months in my 20s. I've actually been thinking about doing it again recently. It really should only be done if you don't need to drive and have no worry about failing deadlines at work.

That's interesting, I actually used to find something similar. I have chronic fatigue syndrome (chronic = persistent, fatigue = tired, syndrome = god knows why). The upshot of this is when I am under any amount of stress I become very prone to poor / low sleep. For example I have a deadline coming up and I am writing this at 3am.

During particularly bad periods I did find that hours awake from midnight to ~5am were both very productive and very happy. No idea what that's about. Fortunately I don't drive so sleep deprivation is not such a dangerous issue.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#47

Post by o10449366 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

uberduper wrote: post #37

o10449366 wrote: post #6

I was born with chronic insomnia and I'm now in my early 30s. I never feel sleepy and just this past Monday I went to work having not slept the night before. I'm healthy now and I guess my body is so used to the effects of sleep deprivation that I feel no side effects (such as headaches), but I wouldn't be surprised if I die very young. If you have any questions feel free to ask them, just please don't suggest I try…

Ever get your testosterone levels tested?

Almost certainly as part of the sleep studies and checkups I've done, but I don't recall any doctors calling any particular attention to it. They always seem more concerned with the state of my heart and my mental state (any anxiety/depression/etc.) when I go to checkups.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#48

Post by o10449366 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

neom wrote: post #31

o10449366 wrote: post #6

I was born with chronic insomnia and I'm now in my early 30s. I never feel sleepy and just this past Monday I went to work having not slept the night before. I'm healthy now and I guess my body is so used to the effects of sleep deprivation that I feel no side effects (such as headaches), but I wouldn't be surprised if I die very young. If you have any questions feel free to ask them, just please don't suggest I try…

Same deal here, same age as well - I often wonder if I did it to myself by staying up all night every night in my teens IRCing with folks in the US, never the less I don't get jetlag (currently in Seoul and adjusted that day) and I don't feel uncomfortable (prefer?) 4 hours sleep.

That's interesting. I've heard several people say they developed insomnia as teenagers, but for me it was ever since I was a kid. My parents would always get annoyed with me when I was young because I would talk with my siblings all night instead of sleeping.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#49

Post by TallGuyShort » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC

motivic wrote: post #9

In case you feel sleep is a waste of time, it could actually be surprisingly productive to sleep. Once thing I noticed in grad school is that your sub-conscious is passively working on the problems you encountered even if you are not actively thinking about them. And often I would "dream" up a clever solution to a homework problem during my sleep. J.P. Serre, one of the most brilliant mathematician still living today…

I once had a problem we had thought / talked about for maybe a year, that gradually increased in urgency. We were almost down to the wire on coming up with a solution, we had 3 detailed plans written up, and they all had huge trade-offs, none of which were really acceptable to the majority of use-cases. I once spent an entire day thinking it through non-stop and just couldn't see past what we had already planned. Eventually decided to call it a night.

I woke up at 5am and knew exactly how to solve all of it. Took me 3 weeks to code what I knew the moment I woke up and it worked flawlessly from day 1 of testing. Now if I'm stuck I take off early and rest.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#50

Post by eyegor » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

I'm sure that it must be true based on how other people act on little sleep, but for me the effects this article claims are blown way out of proportion (or just seem wrong).

> longer than 48 hours and you’re looking at behavior that mimics psychosis—incoherent rambling, disconnection from reality, prone to outbursts

Does anyone else here have experience staying awake this long? In college I frequently stayed awake for 48 hours without much effect besides my reaction times falling off a cliff and a mild high toward the end. Hallucinations never kicked in until 60+ (which is a more substantial increase than it seems). My main gripe is all the effects listed in the article seem to take it as fact that less sleep = more grumpy, while in my experience the complete opposite is true (less sleep = more goofy/euphoria).