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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

#111

Post by mmazing »

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…

Happens to me all the time. I sit up in bed and think "oh that's how I can solve that" or "I should refactor this code this way", etc.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#112

Post by K0SM0S »

dwd wrote: post #72
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 can fall asleep quickly, but I would also fit into the definition of chronically sleep deprived. (4 1/2 or 6 hours each night, sometimes only 3 hours) I never use an alarm and rely on daylight to wake up. You could try all those meditative techniques to get your brain to stop thinking actively about things but what I would suggest if you've tried everything else is - work out your sleep cycle and time going to bed…

This is very good advice, thank you. I've known about sleep cycles for a long time and indeed, I do follow such patterns — my sleep, as little as I get, seems perfectly normal from a clinical standpoint.

I just have the hardest time waking up at the desired time — just as difficult for me as falling asleep. I don't do well with too-short nights either, when my body decides to sleep it's largely best I let it sleep for as long as it needs (rarely more than 12h, it's weird how I clock 8-9 hours without an alarm most of the time like anyone 'normal').

However I've never tried correlating sleep time with wake time in terms of full cycles, and I'm pretty sure I could. I'll definitely try! Thanks again, so much.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#113

Post by devilmoon »

MisterOctober wrote: post #5

A lot of the stuff mentioned in this article -- microsleeps, immune weakness, irrational thoughts and behavior -- sure rings a bell from my university days when I would, either for work or school "reasons," routinely pull all-nighters. Ended up with some very bad results. Also: Schools in general in my area, including elementary, are starting waaaay earlier than they used to, and the kids aren't getting enough sleep,…

Oh boy, the university I'm attending right now has lectures starting at 8am, which is earlier than usual for my country, and ca. 36 hours of lectures per week. This means that you usually go 8am/6pm in uni multiple days a week, then you obviously have your assignments and catching up on the lectures to do, and all the random stuff that comes with living alone (laundry, grocery, cooking, cleaning, etc.) - this means that you quite literally get to the point where you either study or start skipping sleep. I complained to my faculty and the administration because it is quite full of studies that show that sleep deprivation leads to depression, lower performance, etc. And got various responses out of them: - a couple of professors told me that they don't care and if you want to succeed in university you have to sleep less than normal - some admin staff told me that the university doesn't have enough space for everyone, hence they have to start earlier in the morning to gain an additional lecture slot during the day (nevermind the fact that this slot is from 12 to 2pm and is always used for lunch break).

This shit really makes me furious, if not even universities which should be run by people that rely on hard data to make their decisions can come to the conclusion that starting the day early either means fucking up the long term health of their students or having people skip lectures altogether, I don't know if anyone ever will.

Sorry for any mistakes in my post, for context it's 6:30am and I'm getting ready for a lecture (riding on 5 hours of sleep for a few days in a row now)

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#114

Post by dplgk »

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…

On a related note, I wear a fitbit and if I sleep from say 12-8, you'd think this would be 8 hours of sleep (as recommended) but I usually have about 1 hour awake or restless (according to the fitbit). So fitbit says I got 7 hours of sleep.

The question is do these studies account for this supposed awakeness that seems to be part of everyone's night of sleep? Surely nobody that reads them thinks they need 8+1 hours when the study says 8 hours is good...

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#115

Post by dajohnson89 »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #49
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. Eve…

do you have an established routine for embarking on major efforts like that? how much value is there in writing out the plan, and at what resolution? I'm figuring out how to "sketch" large problems as I move towards being a more senior developer.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#116

Post by htfu »

eyegor wrote: post #103
ravenstine wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stayed awake two nights in a row during college and, while I felt miserable and perhaps somewhat dilirious, I don't believe I had such disassociative effects. I could believe incoherent rambling after maybe 4 or 5 days, but that seems extreme for 2.

4 or 5 days? I'm not convinced a healthy person could make it that long. I've asked hundreds of classmates and grad students over the years for their records and have yet to meet anyone that claimed over 72 hours. Personally my body was almost completely non functional around 65 ish hours -- stumbling and slurring words, no concept of time, incapable of focusing. The only reason I was awake long enough to reach that…

50-60h is my limit, and luckily haven't been near that in a long time. Shit gets weird.

Not having met anyone that claimed 72h+ probably mostly just means you've never known any speed freaks - what happens after that mostly depends on whether or not you're on meth.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#118

Post by numlock86 »

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 noticed in grad school that your sub-conscious is passively working on the problems you encountered even if you are not actively thinking about them

As other comments already mentioned, this works amazing for problem solving related jobs as well. As an engineer I use this actively on almost a weekly basis.

To make this work you just gotta really think about that problem and understand the actual parameters very well. Like almost every detail. And you really need to want it solved. Like make it really bother you. This usually comes by itself if you are engaged enough with the problem anyway. You can't solve something subconsciously when you just glanced at it and think "meh" about it. Then go to sleep and hope for the best if you didn't already solve it by using the above steps. Worst case is you wake up with the urge to understand the problem better and either get the solution or the next hints within the day ... or next session of sleep. The brain is really an amazing tool if utilized right.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#119

Post by dajohnson89 »

devilmoon wrote: post #113
MisterOctober wrote: post #5

A lot of the stuff mentioned in this article -- microsleeps, immune weakness, irrational thoughts and behavior -- sure rings a bell from my university days when I would, either for work or school "reasons," routinely pull all-nighters. Ended up with some very bad results. Also: Schools in general in my area, including elementary, are starting waaaay earlier than they used to, and the kids aren't getting enough sleep,…

Oh boy, the university I'm attending right now has lectures starting at 8am, which is earlier than usual for my country, and ca. 36 hours of lectures per week. This means that you usually go 8am/6pm in uni multiple days a week, then you obviously have your assignments and catching up on the lectures to do, and all the random stuff that comes with living alone (laundry, grocery, cooking, cleaning, etc.) - this means t…

fwiw, I've had several work meetings before 9am. they weren't my favorite thing in the world, but i didn't have a choice

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#120

Post by IIAOPSW »

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.

Imagine a future where we have engineered this effect to perfection, and even in your dreams you are expected to work. The effect would be an increase in the supply of labor, without an increase in the population. Wages would be depressed. There would be at least some people who have no reprieve, no moment to themselves, just so they can make it to the next paycheck and survive. 24 hour wage slaves. A human shaped cog in a capitalists machine.

What a remarkable hell we engineer for ourselves.

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