Don’t you sometimes wish you could just drop everything and take a nice, comfy nap right then and there? For some of use, deep sense of regret for staying up late the night before has become a part of our morning routine, and spending the better part of each day yawning, zoning out, and wishing for the workday to end can be especially detrimental to getting important work done.
Most humans spend almost a third of their lives sleeping, yet sleep still remains somewhat of a mystery to scientists due to its incredible complexity. But what we do know are the reasons we, humans, need sleep. It is an integral part of all human lives as it is needed to maintain a healthy physical, emotional, and mental state, and contrary to what you might think, your body is actually very active during this time.
Sleep is an active period in which a lot of the important processing, restoration, and strengthening occurs in our body. It helps in re-energizing the body’s cells, clear waste from the brain, and regulate mood, and appetite. For example, our bodies produce growth hormones during sleep, which helps to burn fats and develop lean muscles.
Sleep also regulates the immune system and improves blood circulation. Brain imaging studies have shown that the sleep-deprives brain lacks blood flow and metabolism, which has been linked to impaired cognitive function and behavior.
As you know, the amount of sleep we need depends on our age, but it also varies between individuals. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the majority of adults need somewhere between 7-9 hours of sleep.
While short-term sleep deprivation leads to effects such as drowsiness, decreased alertness and cognitive impairment, long-term sleep deprivation generates much more serious adverse effects such as high blood pressure, obesity, mental health disorders, and as much as 4.5 times the regular likelihood of having stroke!
Modern science has suggestions for getting a good night’s sleep, called – sleep hygiene. It suggest maintaining a regular bedtime schedule with a consistent wake-up time, minimizing the use of electronic device an hour before sleep, and creating a relaxing and peaceful environment for sleep.
In our fast-paced culture where pulling all-nighters seem to have become the norm for many students and workers, it is important to understand the nasty side effects it can have on your life. You might think that missing sleep for 24 or 6 hours once in a while might not be a bad thing, but for every hour of sleep-deprivation, our long-term memory greatly diminishes, our immune system weakens leaving our body open to infections, and our hormone balance become greatly disrupted – and that’s just the beginning.
Dr. Joseph Ojile, founder of Clayton Sleep Institute, has stated that sleep deprivation for 17 hours, is equivalent to having a 0.08 percent blood alcohol level, the threshold for drunk for driving. After 24 hours, you would have the equivalent of a 0.01 percent blood alcohol level, which is basically been being drunk.
The scariest thing about all of this is the loss of ability to think and make judgments, because the individual is unaware of their impairment, and this can lead to very dangerous situations.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrations, drowsy driving caused 72,000 crashes and 800 deaths in the US between 2009 -2014. However, this numbers are roughly estimated and up to 6,000 fatal crashes each year are thought to be caused by drowsy driving.
If you think that’s bad, there has also been a lot of research on what happens after you stay awake for more than 24 hours, which is actually pretty common for students during the exam season.
An experiment at Stanford was conducted on a high school student named Randy Gardner in 1964. The student had intentionally stayed awake for 264.4 hours – which is more than 11 days! After two days, he struggled to focus, after three, he started hallucinating and became paranoid. When asked to do a simple math task – subtracting 7 repeatedly starting with 100 – he managed to reach 65 before he suddenly forgot what he was doing. The effects were so severe that the Guiness Book of World Records stopped including voluntary sleep deprivation to discourage future attempts.
A study at the Marche Polytechnic University in Italy, found that chronic sleep deprivation could actually destroy the brain. Researchers saw that astrocytes – brain cells which normally prune away connections and clear debris in the brain – became hyperactive in mice after just 5 days of sleep deprivation. This can cause important connections to break down, leading to permanent damage in the brain, and an increased risk for dementias.
So, for students, pulling an all-night might not be worth it, because your memory and executive functions will take a huge blow, greatly impairing your ability to perform will the next day.
What if you stay up very late at night but still able to have the 8 hrs sleep, will it have the same effect? Like for example I slept as late as 3AM but woke up at 11AM