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What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

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Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#91

Post by taneq »

makz wrote: post #64
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…

One day I could not compile something. After fighting it several hours I decided to go sleep. A few minutes before waking up I dreamed that the solution was to set an environment variable. I even saw the specific variable and which value I had to set. I woke up and immediately tried it. It worked.

I was banging my head on a brick wall for an hour or so yesterday trying to figure out how a simple obvious thing wasn't working. The (also simple but slightly less obvious) setting that I'd forgotten to update came to me just as I was drifting off to sleep. This happens all the time.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#92

Post by mvansch »

getpost wrote: post #26
cloverich wrote: post #4

Obligatory "Why We Sleep" link https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ1YGJ5 . Writing is ok, but content is great. In short, sleep impacts many more aspects of your health than most realize and is well understood in many aspects. For instance, I was surprised to learn that poor sleep the week after learning something can significantly reduce your recall of it. When slowly learning something over a few months, it's the differ…

Here's the first part of Peter Attia's three part interview with Matthew Walker (6+ hrs total listening time!). Most of the content of the book is covered; it's very motivating insofar as prioritizing sleep quality. https://peterattiamd.com/matthewwalker1/ Matthew Walker's main site: https://www.humansleepscience.com/

Also interesting to see him on Joe Rogan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#93

Post by cj »

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…

You alluded to taking benzos + z-drugs for 10+ years (you weren't very specific, so I could be off base) on 6-9 month cycles with 3 month tolerance break, and that you've been clean off benzo/x-drugs for a year now.

I've seen cases of benzo/z-drug withdrawal (after a short 1-2 years of daily use) requiring 3 months to even notice relief from the side effects of the withdrawal (most notably, horrible insomnia). And then another 6-12 months of abstinence to reach a place where the withdrawal effects are no longer top of mind, or subtly present but not overwhelming.

If you were on benzo/z-drug for very many consecutive years (even with short tolerance breaks), especially if those years were before age 25, it's very possible that your brain has never had a chance to function in the way a "normal" (non-altered) brain functions that hasn't been exposed to long term benzo/z-drug therapy.

The scary part about benzo/z-drugs is that they can, over time, change the structure and chemistry of your brain through upregulation and downregulation of receptors in response to the presence of drugs. With benzos in particular, the amount of time it takes to reverse the drug-induced changes seems to be incredibly long (not weeks, barely months, maybe years -- obviously depending on the length of time of initial exposure).

This is all to say that, if indeed you were on ultra long-term benzo/z-drugs for an extended amount of time (2-5+ years), 1 year of abstinence may not be enough to fully recover back to a normal state.

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And I assume you do all the basic sleep hygiene stuff for insomnia: no caffeine (at all, not even in the morning), no stimulants even if prescribed, intense exercise in the morning but not at night, not eating within 3 hours of sleep, no electronics within 2 hours of sleep.

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If you think the first part of my comment is BS, and if you've already done everything in the 2nd part of the comment, I'd highly recommend trying a dramatic diet change: something like going strict vegan and cutting out all processed sugars (and processed foods in general),

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And if that too fails, think deeply about what triggers anxiety / emotional discord in your life, and try to eliminate the source of that completely. This is the hardest advice to follow through with, since for many people it means quitting jobs, ending marriages, disowning family, moving to another country... you get the point.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#94

Post by [deleted] »

franciscop wrote: post #67

This is an amazing gem: > on the Monday after spring daylight saving time, when we lose an hour of sleep, there’s a 25 percent increase in heart attacks > Conversely, in the fall, when we gain an extra hour, there is a 21 percent reduction in heart attacks. So daylight saving kills an extra 4% people by heart attacks. Light Yagami approves. I wonder whether it's because of the sleep itself, or because when people don…

[deleted]

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#95

Post by kerkeslager »

mantap wrote: post #84
nashequilibrium wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just had one of these moments two days ago, the only other thing that comes close is when I go for long walks.

I have many epiphanies on the toilet. I'm not sure if it's extra blood flowing to the brain or what but the throne seems to add extra IQ.

I noticed extra inspiration on bathroom breaks as well, but as a control I tried just getting up and walking outside and back, and that seemed to have the same effect for me.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#96

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

As a designer I often run into creative blocks. Sleeping on them usually brings clarity. I’ve made it a point to never hand over any project until I’ve slept on it and had a chance to look it over the next day. Almost always I’ll find something that needs fixing or that could be done better!

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#97

Post by eyegor »

pravus wrote: post #71
eyegor wrote: post #50

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 fo…

This is very much a personal thing and the article is only showing one end of the spectrum. While I have issues staying up past 48 hours and my longest ever stint was 56 or so, I can go for 36 hours easily without any real dramatic adverse effects. I certainly don't feel drunk and am quite capable of performing complicated work even after 24 hours of being awake. As long as the sun is up my body generally wants to be…

> when I finally got into bed it still took me something like 2 hours to finally fall asleep because I felt too tired to actually fall asleep

Oh I can absolutely relate to that. On low sleep I found it incredibly natural to fall asleep sitting on a bench with no back rest (without falling over), but purposefully trying to sleep in a bed was always difficult. Up until about 35-40 hours awake I can easily fall asleep in a bed, but it becomes challenging past that point. I'm guessing my brain is pulling some c4 trickery there since that's roughly when my coordination starts to deteriorate.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#98

Post by interfixus »

Yet another anecdotal data point: I pulled my first all-nighter at age nine. That was July 1969, Armstrong on the Moon, which in Europe was a nighttime event. Stayed up for the rerun next morning and day. Tired, of course, and everything slightly unreal, mostly from all the agitation and the ghostly tv images, I think. Since then, have not infrequently skipped nights - because of night shifts of physical labor, because of coding and inability to call it a day, because of travelling, because of childbirth, because of sudden insomnia, because of new, exciting girlfriend or - rarely - because of partying. Generally, once I get a normal night of sleep, I'm fine, no residual effects that I'm aware of. 'A normal night of sleep' means 7 - 8 hours in the dark part of the year, 5 - 6 during summer. Just entered my sixties, and healthwise doing just fine. Working in a job with a higly varying time schedule and actually enjoying it, whereas regular hours Monday through Friday eventually always push me into torpor and quasi-depression. I rarely take naps, but will go to bed and fall asleep no problem at five or six in the afternoon if that's what my schedule dictates.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#99

Post by cj »

K0SM0S wrote: post #35

I've suffered from insomnia most of my teen and adult life (I am 37). I sometimes go up to 3 days without sleep (thus 2 nights, ~60 hours total; 'record' just shy of 80 hours), then sleep for ~12 hours. I usually work almost the entire time. My "default" day seems to last 25~30 hours, give or take, which means that naturally there are more like 6 'days' per week for me. ('days' roughly defined as periods of wake time…

I'm not sure how to word this, so please don't take it the wrong way, but have you been screened for mental health problems? Periods of extended bouts of energy + productivity followed by sleep sounds like it something that could be associated with certain forms of bipolar disorder.

Just curious what your personal opinion is of your mental health (and why you might not fit those typical diagnoses), since I'm sure you've come across similar information when googling your own symptoms.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#100

Post by o10449366 »

cj wrote: post #93
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…

You alluded to taking benzos + z-drugs for 10+ years (you weren't very specific, so I could be off base) on 6-9 month cycles with 3 month tolerance break, and that you've been clean off benzo/x-drugs for a year now. I've seen cases of benzo/z-drug withdrawal (after a short 1-2 years of daily use) requiring 3 months to even notice relief from the side effects of the withdrawal (most notably, horrible insomnia). And th…

I haven't had issues with anxiety/depression since I was a teenager, thankfully. I'm very peaceful even when I can't sleep. When I was younger that was a big source of frustration and stress (especially during school), but I've accepted it many years ago. This is who I am and nothing can really change about that. :)

I've also never gotten into the habit of drinking caffeine. The only time I'll drink coffee is if my friends who are into that kind of stuff bring back some rare coffee from a trip and invite me to try some. I also don't drink soda or energy drinks.

It's possible that being on the sleep medications for extended periods of time changed my brain chemistry, but I think my condition is different from most people. This was something I was legitimately born with and can remember struggling with even as a very young child (3-4 years old). My parents have similar recollections. No one else in my family has this issue - I just see it as an unlucky mutation.

I'm glad you mentioned diet. I think that is probably something that helps me. I've been on keto for most of my adult life and since graduating college and starting working I've been on one meal a day (lunch) aside from the few month stretches where I tried to gain weight for weightlifting. Thankfully my parents were amazing cooks growing up and were also too poor to avoid keeping snacks in the house so I never got into the habit of eating candy or junk food. I definitely notice that I struggle to sleep even more on occasions where I go out and eat with friends late at night and eat carb heavy meals that I wouldn't eat otherwise.

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