Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

outsideonline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 324 posts

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#121

Post by htfu »

cj wrote: post #99
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…

Sounds more like an adaption to a longer than 24h circadian rhythm than bipolar disorder, which shouldn't cycle that fast or regularly.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#122

Post by dvcrn »

wildduck wrote: post #105
makz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the exact reason why we should have beds at work and not have regular working hours. People should just work and sleep whenever they want as long as they make meetings and project deadlines.

I for my part would never want to sleep at a bed in my office. I'd rather go home. I also live in Japan and a lot of places here have beds in the office but all it does is squeeze more time out of people and make them stay longer

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#123

Post by egeozcan »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #109
kerkeslager wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's something going on during that context switch. It feels like because all of the data about a problem is being unloaded into long term memory, when you return to the problem, you parse the entire data as once instead of adding to it in pieces. It almost feels like a puzzle except the second time looking at it, you're looking at the whole thing you've solved versus just the piece you last added.

I totally agree. When faced with a problem outside the comfort zone, sometimes the brain focuses too much on a part that may turn out to be irrelevant. Having a break and returning later usually works wonderfully to again see the big picture.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#124

Post by amitport »

6nf wrote: post #70

Do we still allow medical staff and ER doctors to work 20 hour days?

I live in Israel. Doctors work 26 hours shifts 6-8 times a month.

In practice, in many departments it's worse. When needed it will be 28-30 but without pay for the extra hours because it's illegal (doctors are expected not to leave when it people are at risk...but it is illegal to stay so they just sign off and continue working)

During recovery time after long shifts, doctors may be waken by phone call (when things are urgent, or when somebody in the department is just annoying)

There is some variation, between hospitals and departments. Some departments will have quiet hours that allow sleep. Others, like Gynecology don't (births generally can't wait till morning)

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#125

Post by dwd »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #109
kerkeslager wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's something going on during that context switch. It feels like because all of the data about a problem is being unloaded into long term memory, when you return to the problem, you parse the entire data as once instead of adding to it in pieces. It almost feels like a puzzle except the second time looking at it, you're looking at the whole thing you've solved versus just the piece you last added.

Maybe just walk through a doorway?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu...

It would be an interesting experiment to think on a problem, then swap to a different office and see if that gives you a different perspective and insight.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#126

Post by nikkwong »

glaive123 wrote: post #41
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…

Just went ahead and bought a series 5 Apple Watch because of this comment. I have a long tumultuous history with sleep apnea and have been desperately trying everything to figure out how to improve it. I typically sleep 10 hours per day (the sleep apnea is that bad), so I'm going to start recording with the app you've mentioned and see what happens. Thanks so much! Feel free to each out to my email in bio and we can start comparing once i have some data.

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#127

Post by harikb »

numlock86 wrote: post #118
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 w…

Lucky you. In my case, I end up thinking about the problem in my sleep, come up with solutions that are a mix between reality and fantasy within the dream and usually end in a horrible loop of the above while I desperately try to break out of it. In short, spoils my whole night sleep ( at least how I feel about it next day ). Rarely have it actually produced a successful solution!

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#129

Post by devilmoon »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #119
devilmoon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The difference being that those meetings were a one-off or at the very least a rare occurrence. University,on the other hand, is a daily commitment for several years (meaning that it can also lead to chronic sleep deprivation)

Re: What Happens to the Body on No Sleep

#130

Post by coconutrandom »

harikb wrote: post #127
numlock86 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

Lucky you. In my case, I end up thinking about the problem in my sleep, come up with solutions that are a mix between reality and fantasy within the dream and usually end in a horrible loop of the above while I desperately try to break out of it. In short, spoils my whole night sleep ( at least how I feel about it next day ). Rarely have it actually produced a successful solution!

Wow, I thought that only happened to me. There was only one specific project I was on where I would have the not so practical fantasy solution like you described. Others were like the parent, a good sleep discovers solutions, I wonder what my subconscious was saying about all of this.
Post reply on HN