How Sleep Deprivation Decays the Mind and Body

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/how-sleep-deprivation-decays-the-mind-and-body/282395/



I awoke in a bed for the first time in days. My joints ached and my eyelids, which had been open for so long, now lay heavy as old hinges above my cheekbones. I wore two pieces of clothing: an assless gown and a plastic bracelet.

I remembered the hallway I had been wheeled down, and the doctor’s office where I told the psychiatrist he was the devil, but not this room. I forced myself up and stumbled, grabbing the chair and the bathroom doorknob for balance. I made it to the toilet, then threw water on my face at the sink, staring into the mirror in the little lavatory. My tousled hair shot out around my puffy face; my head throbbed. I looked hungover.

In those first moments, I remembered the basics about what had landed me in the hospital: Some pseudo-philosophical ranting and flailing brought on by a poorly executed experiment to see how long I could last without sleep.

I was 18, in Italy, on a school-sponsored trip with that pompously misnamed group for American teens who earn As and Bs, the National Honor Society. I stayed up writing all night, and the next morning, on little more than impulse, I decided to go for it.

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. Interesting interconnection of sleeplessness w. psychotic episodes.

I know someone w. the latter.... that were precipitated by the former. I didn't really understand the process until now.

[mopinko]

2. i am thoroughly convinced that sleep has caused episodic depression

in myself and my hubbie. all my big depressions, including post partum, are obviously linked to my sleep situation at the time.

it is a great thing that these days you can get a $100 gadget and track your own sleep instead of needing a gazillion dollar doctor payoff. if you think this might be you, do it.

[SheilaT]

3. Getting enough sleep is vastly underrated in our culture.

Instead, there's a macho heroism awarded to those who get by with the least sleep.

Unfortunately, sleep deprivation is a very bad thing. I often think that my annoyingly good health may be in no small part connected to my almost always getting enough sleep.

There are those who virtuously claim that humans only need some ludicrously small amount of sleep every night. Or that certain geniuses, like Thomas Edison, got by with only 4 hours of sleep a night. He took a lot of naps, said one assistant.

The truth is, we need a minimum of eight hours a night. A few really do get by quite well on less. Many of us need more.

Perhaps the best way to figure out how much your really do need is to just spend a week or more going to bed when you're tired, and getting up when you actually wake up. If you need an alarm clock to blast you out of sleep, you haven't slept enough.