This Is What Happens To Our Bodies When We Are Sleep-Deprived

6 years ago
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science health brain biology pbs digital studios neuroscience braincraft vanessa hill

A 24-year-old guy known as Z decided he had enough sleeping in this lifetime so one day in 1930, he approached a couple of researchers and ask them if they could help him stop sleeping. He was convinced that sleep is a habit and that with proper procedures the habit could be broken. On several occasions, he would have gone without sleep for four or five days. There are many experiments like this in the past and in this one, the guy Z thought if he could be stimulated by tasks and other people to stay awake more than a week he would never need to sleep again. He would break the habit.

So, the researchers gave him a typewriter and ask him to type for thirty minutes a day marking each minute of typing. They would compare his typing speed and accuracy as one measure to find out the effects of sleeplessness. Throughout the ten days of not sleeping, his pulse, his blood pressure and the chemicals in his pee all stayed the same. He did a bunch of intelligence tests every day and his marks belly changed. But his typing speed declined and after day four he couldn’t type any more. He couldn’t fixate on letters and numbers and he said his eyes were sore. Still, Z stayed up and didn’t complained of mental or physical fatigue. He didn’t become easily irritated. He started reporting hallucinations. On the last day of the experiment he wrote a nice poem and when the experiment ended, he slept.

The researchers concluded that it was possible to go with practically no sleep for ten days without any known physiological effects or damage to mental functions. Similar studies found no damage from sleeplessness.

Now after 50 more years research we know that sleep deprivation leads to depression, high blood pressure, diabetes, weight gain and heart diseases. A good night sleep is kind of a big deal. We need 7-9 hours at night for our memory to function. If we don’t sleep, we will never learn.

Your body needs sleep, just as it needs air and food to function at its best. So, don’t forget to sleep.

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