Sleep Deprivvvvvv

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by ronthepon

I'm pretty sure that headaches arise from a different cause. Sleep deprivation does eventually result in chemical imbalance in the brain. I'd assume that there were a group of chemicals that could 'imbalance'.

One group of chemicals leads to one symptom, some other problem leads to another symptom. The question is: what exactly happens?

Good post! I'll have to ask my nuerochem friend.
I'm guessing that no sleep results in lower excitation globally, but yet more centralized. That's the way it feels anyway.

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by Buffy

I have stayed up continuously for up to 48 hours traveling though, with one presentation to 500 people in Oslo Norway when I had been up for about 30 hours after the reverse flight to what Tormod just did last weekend...

You've been to Oslo?

Anyway, I pretty much wrote the book on sleep deprivation, but I lost it somewhere during my zombie hours.

My record is two weeks with no "real" sleep. I had several rounds of that in the mid 1990s. I was unable to sleep at all, and eventually my body collapsed around 5am. Sadly I had to get up at 6am to get to work. Since I worked as a substitute teacher at the time, it was pretty horrible. After two weeks the headmaster found me half asleep in the home room and I was sent to the ER to get some assistance. I was basically so exhausted that I was unable to function normally (so what else is new ) and I got some sleeping pills and was sent home to catch up.

I've had sleeping problems since I was a little kid, and it's still my main problem in life. On average I get 4 hours of sleep, so I rarely sleep very well and never wake up feeling refreshed (I usually feel worse in the mornings than the evenings).

When things are bad (usually 3/4 of any given time period) I sleep two hours, wake up exhausted, feel like a zombie at work, run out of energy around 4-5pm and the evenings can be a PITA to get through. Occasionally I pass out on the sofa, but if I manage to pull myself together I go out for a run. I also try to spend time on Hypography and my music projects, but I'll be too tired to do anything creative so I'll just stare at the monitor, more or less.

On good days I get about 6-7 hours of sleep, and then I function pretty "normally" (I must admit to not knowing what normal is, since I never ever sleep well). I am so used to not sleeping much, so that if I go through a night or two without sleep, I can usually manage to catch up on the third or fourth night so that I do eventually get some sleep.

I should add that I have now used sleeping pills (pretty strong ones) since 2000 and they do help me fall asleep, but usually it takes hours. And I have a tendency to wake up very early and lie in bed with "waking nightmares" which are the worst kind IMHO.

I know the question was "sleep deprivation", which could imply that it is *forced* - ie, a torture method. The response is what people have posted above. The sad thing is of course that the bodily response is the same whether it's done to you or whether you suffer from insomnia like I do - it is exremely unhealthy and I have read some news here and there stating that insomnia is as bad as smoking when it comes to life expectancy etc.

[Boerseun]

I've heard it explained this way, kinda makes sense to me:

Your neural paths and patterns can be likened to hair. Each strand represents one neural pathway. As the day goes on, the hair gets messed up, and it gets harder to see the 'ponytail for the crow's nest'. When you sleep, your brain uses a specific rythmic pulse that is quite unlike the brainwaves generated when you're awake. It's a synchronised slow firing of all synapses, them getting more and more in synch the deeper you sleep. Coming back to the analogy, this can be likened to the hair being brushed, rythmic strokes getting all the strands in line again. So that when you wake up the next morning, your neurons have been 'groomed' and are fresh and in-line, ready for use and easily accessable, seeing as they've been so carefully 'combed' during the night. Obviously not physically, but you get the idea...

All-nighters I've pulled used to be work-related, where we migrate thousands of machines overnight when the user impact would be negligable. So you go to work 7am and start prepping the site for the evening's migration. 6pm the machines are downed, software distributed, etc. etc., and we do the do till 7am next morning. Then we have to hang around the rest of the day to stabilise the site and ascertain whether it was a success or not, and to assist in solving problems the techies can't sort out. On three occasions we had to roll-back the entire previous night's migration, which kept us running around for 72 hours straight. And I tell you, sleep is much more important that we'd normally think. And that hair analogy of combing out all the kinks sure works for me.

[kalexia]

Does anyone get that weird occurence when you feel more tired getting up late then when you get up early? If I get up at 7 I feel tired initially but then soon wake up, but then get tired in the evening, but if I get up at 11, I feel less tired at the start but more sluggish for the rest of the day, and usually not be tired til really late at night. I've heard it's something to do with sleep 'shifts' or something, when you go past one sleep segment and into another one which is why you feel more tired getting up late?

[maikeru]

Originally Posted by freeztar

Headaches have been mentioned a few times now. I've never experienced that. In my longest endurance, 50 hours, I noticed that my processing was down. Thoughts took a minute to process. I was slow, but blissfully so. I felt completely disconnected from my environment and relied more on info supplied by my constant hallucinations.
The feeling is indescribable, unless you have hallucinated before. It is all-consuming and very unhealthy so I'm told. Too bad I frequently experience insomnia these days.

My experiences with sleep deprivation are similar to yours, minus the hallucinations. Headaches sometimes, but more often dreamy, disconnected, body temperature drops and feeling cold, incredibly slow, and increasingly mentally handicapped as the day goes on. It did depend, though, on a couple things. Coffee can help out initially, but has no effect after a couple hours. Tea works better, really sharpens the mind, but eventually has no effect as well. I eventually end up as responsive as a couch potato.

I've read that much of this are due to problems with glucose metabolism and insulin release. It appears that sleep is important to resetting several of the body's control systems and hormonal levels, which help with glucose metabolism. Since the brain is so dependent on glucose for fuel, screwy glucose levels = brain damage of a sort.

Log In Problems (Funny, I could access this freely from my Google search, but now I have to register? Well, it's a good article if you do.)
Sleep Deprivation Can Hinder Sports Performance
Entrez PubMed

Sleep deprivation is really bad for any extended length of time. Depression, memory loss, attention and focus problems, personality changes, anemia, and more are serious risks. Also, by losing sleep consistently, you can increase your chances for diabetes type II, heart disease, and cancer.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I find that I only really function if I sleep in 90 minute intervals.

90 Minutes - Good to go, if a little loopy.
3 Hours - Reasonably rested. Once a week tops, though. Might need a nap later.
4.5 Hours - Pretty good. I can do this for long periods of time if required.
6 Hours - Perfect.

If I get 5 hours, or 4 hours, or 3 hours and 45 minutes, I am utterly useless.

I suspect this has something to do with the 90 minute REM cycle, but don't really know.

TFS

[Jay-qu]

I have read an article on this, I just went and found it again to refresh my memory - anyone thats interested on how to live off 4.5hours of sleep a day:

www.glenrhodes.com - The power of the Sleep Cycle

[CraigD]

There was a good bit of discussion similar to this thread’s in about a month ago in ”hallucinations”. I recounted my and my wife’s spooky experiences with sleep deprivation while driving (or what I tend to think of as doing things while slightly asleep that are best done while wide awake) in this post.

My personal experience with staying awake for a long time while not doing something dangerous consists most notably of one Thursday night/Friday morning I didn’t sleep, and decided to carry on through the weekend to see how long I could stay awake, and what it was like.

From dusk to dawn Friday night/Saturday morning, I sat cross-legged watching the night in my best impersonation of someone who really knows how to do yoga, having very quiet, very strange thought that seemed to revolve around the idea that I was superhuman and would never need to sleep again. Though I remained in a head-up, spine-straight position all night, I now suspect I was falling into brief “dreamlet” states of neurotypical sleep.

The next day, Saturday, I felt preternaturally alert and calm, and went to the track to test my physical performance. Though I felt fine, I was significantly weaker than normal, with terrible times running distances from 50 to 400 m, and even worse long jump distances.

Saturday early afternoon, still feeling better-than-normal, I ran my usual FRPG session. Several players commented that I was weirder than my usual self, though none mentioned an increased rate of errors, verbal pauses, or other typical signs of sleep depravation.

By dusk, I was barely able to stay awake, even after downing a travel mug of cafeteria espresso (I worked in a dorm cafeteria that sold espresso, so had illicit access to it). It was a my tradition to spend from about 8 PM ‘til cafeteria breakfast at 6:30 AM playing an “offshoot” campaign with for a small bunch of FRPGers, but my cognitive skills were so impaired, I abandoned that, and tried to repeat Friday night’s cross-legged night-watching trick, but kept finding myself stretched out in a comfy sleeping position with no clear recollection of having gone from sitting to that, so by 10 PM curled up in a nice soft bed and went to sleep.

Saturday night/Sunday morning, I had vivid, memorable dreams in which I was involved in an attempt to save the world from mental domination by artist Salvador Dali. In this dream, I physically entered the world of his oil painting “The Persistence of Memory”, and ran about trying to defeat an old, long-mustached Dali’s attempts to chop the landscape into “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory”, ultimately succeeding.

I awoke late Sunday morning, feeling refreshed and happy, until I looked at my walls to see several small scraps of paper from the corners of the not-that-cheap prints of those 2 Dali paintings. I discovered the prints stacked neatly under my bed. Fortunately, I was able to mat them, hiding the torn-off corners.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by CraigD

Saturday night/Sunday morning, I had vivid, memorable dreams in which I was involved in an attempt to save the world from mental domination by artist Salvador Dali. In this dream, I physically entered the world of his oil painting “The Persistence of Memory”, and ran about trying to defeat an old, long-mustached Dali’s attempts to chop the landscape into “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory”, ultimately succeeding.

I awoke late Sunday morning, feeling refreshed and happy, until I looked at my walls to see several small scraps of paper from the corners of the not-that-cheap prints of those 2 Dali paintings. I discovered the prints stacked neatly under my bed. Fortunately, I was able to mat them, hiding the torn-off corners.

That's a great story!
It's interesting to note that Dali was a fanatical sleep-depriver. I remember from art class that he would be so enthralled with his work that he did not want to stop until finished (in fear that he would lose his inspiration). He believed that he didn't need much sleep to keep going and would sit in a chair with a fork or spoon in his hand and relax. When he fell asleep, the spoon would fall and its clamoring on the floor would awaken him. So that's less than one second of sleep!
No wonder his paintings are so weird!!

[orbsycli]

Is it true that seratonin levels are decreased
and dopamine levels are increased the further we go without sleep?