See what will happen if you don’t sleep, Many people don't underscore the importance of sleep in well-being. Claudia Aguirre speaks on what would happen if you didn’t sleep?
In 1965, 17-year-old high school student,
Randy Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours.
That's 11 days to see how he'd cope without sleep.
On the second day, his eyes stopped focusing.
Next, he lost the ability to identify objects by touch. By day three, Gardner
was moody and uncoordinated. At the end of the experiment, he was struggling to
concentrate, had trouble with short-term memory, became paranoid, and started
hallucinating.
Although Gardner recovered without long-term
psychological or physical damage, for others, losing shuteye can result in
hormonal imbalance, illness, and, in extreme cases, death.
We're only beginning to understand why we
sleep to begin with, but we do know it's essential. Adults need seven to eight
hours of sleep a night, and adolescents need about ten.
We grow sleepy due to signals from our body
telling our brain we are tired, and signals from the environment telling us
it's dark outside.
The rise in sleep-inducing chemicals, like
adenosine and melatonin, send us into a light doze that grows deeper, making
our breathing and heart rate slow down and our muscles relax.
This non-REM sleep is when DNA is repaired
and our bodies replenish themselves for the day ahead.
In the United States, it's estimated that 30%
of adults and 66% of adolescents are regularly sleep-deprived.
This isn't just a minor inconvenience.
Staying awake can cause serious bodily harm. When we lose sleep, learning,
memory, mood, and reaction time are affected.
Sleeplessness may also cause inflammation,
halluciations, high blood pressure, and it's even been linked to diabetes and
obesity.
In 2014, a devoted soccer fan died after
staying awake for 48 hours to watch the World Cup.
While his untimely death was due to a stroke,
studies show that chronically sleeping fewer than six hours a night increases
stroke risk by four and half times compared to those getting a consistent seven
to eight hours of shuteye.
For a handful of people on the planet who
carry a rare inherited genetic mutation, sleeplessness is a daily reality.
This condition, known as Fatal Familial
Insomnia, places the body in a nightmarish state of wakefulness, forbidding it
from entering the sanctuary of sleep.
Within months or years, this progressively
worsening condition leads to dementia and death.
How can sleep deprivation cause such immense
suffering? Scientists think the answer lies with the accumulation of waste
products in the brain.
During our waking hours, our cells are busy
using up our day's energy sources, which get broken down into various
byproducts, including adenosine.
As adenosine builds up, it increases the urge
to sleep, also known as sleep pressure.
In fact, caffeine works by blocking
adenosine's receptor pathways.
Other waste products also build up in the
brain, and if they're not cleared away, they collectively overload the brain
and are thought to lead to the many negative symptoms of sleep deprivation.
So, what's happening in our brain when we
sleep to prevent this?
Scientists found something called the
glymphatic system, a clean-up mechanism that removes this buildup and is much
more active when we're asleep.
It works by using cerebrospinal fluid to
flush away toxic byproducts that accumulate between cells.
Lymphatic vessels, which serve as pathways
for immune cells, have recently been discovered in the brain, and they may also
play a role in clearing out the brain's daily waste products.
While scientists continue exploring the
restorative mechanisms behind sleep, we can be sure that slipping into slumber
is a necessity if we want to maintain our health and our sanity.
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