To be honest I quite often just pull all nighters. We gust need less homework and assignments and studies might get that ridiculous minimum of 8h of sleep that is impossible to achieve. I mean I’m only in year 8 and it only gets worse from here. And of course if you can sleep in or go to bed early (the holidays) then you still stay up late and wake up early because your internal clock won’t let you do anything else so I just pass time by my phone and working out (witch is what I am doing right now). And the sad part is I’m not even exaggerating. I mean I do gymnastics until 8:30 and then I have to do homework and study until about 12:00 and then it takes me until 5:30 to get to sleep, then I have to get up at 6:30 for choir. I’m only 13 yet I only get about 1&1/2h of sleep. The moral of the story: You may not be heading for insanity, but go to sleep anyway-here are some sheep to count if you need help. Failing to get enough sleep may be associated with poor concentration, memory lapses, loss of energy and emotional instability-not to mention some chronic diseases. “A lot of things go bad when you don’t get enough sleep,” says Michael Twery, Director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research in Bethesda, Maryland. The possibility of doing something terrible in your sleep is extremely small, but just because sleep deprivation won’t drive you insane doesn’t mean you should pull consecutive all-nighters. “So that would mean 5 percent of the population is temporarily insane.” “About 5 percent of adults sleepwalk,” he says. He says sleepwalking is difficult to describe in legal terms-it doesn’t fit the definition of insanity because there is no mental disorder involved. Michel Cramer Bornemann, SFA’s lead investigator. “Sleepwalkers are capable of amazingly complex behaviors, but they may not be aware or responsible for what they’re doing,” says Dr. While sleep-deprived people still have fully functional brain activity, sleepwalkers only have part of their brains in a state of wakefulness. Mahowald says sleep deprivation can trigger sleepwalking episodes. Many of these cases concern people who say they had no control over their illegal actions, including rape and murder, because of sexsomnia (sexual behavior during sleep) or sleepwalking. Mahowald is a consultant for Sleep Forensics Associates (SFA), a group dedicated to investigating the role of sleep disorders in criminal and civil trials. While depriving oneself of sleep cannot lead to a psychotic episode when awake, it may lead to problems once that person finally gets some shuteye. These short “naps” can prove extremely dangerous when they occur during activities like driving because the person usually doesn’t realize he’s zoning out. So even if someone supposedly stays up for days on end, he still may have gotten small doses of sleep. When people are sleep deprived, they tend to experience brief episodes of sleep known as microsleep. While he did experience some dreamlike escapes from reality, he made it through the week-and-a-half without any mental problems.Īnother problem with linking sleeplessness and insanity is that without scanning brain activity, it’s impossible to prove someone has been awake for extended periods of time. The classic example is Randy Gardner, who in 1964 at the age of 17 stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) straight. “Dreaming actually occurs during wakefulness,” Mahowald says. However, scientists soon realized these people weren’t hallucinating at all-they were dreaming. Mark Mahowald, director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center, researchers had found that some people began “hallucinating” when awakened from REM sleep. The idea that sleep deprivation has psychiatric consequences stems from the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep more than 50 years ago. As you desperately fight off the urge to sleep, you wonder: How much more of this can I take? If I stave off sleep long enough, will I go insane?ĭespite some urban myths that suggest the contrary, the answer is no. Concentration becomes nearly impossible, and you’ve only been up a few hours past your bedtime. As the wee hours of the night pass by, your mood changes from giddy to cranky and back again. Alas, all that procrastination has a price: It’s time to pull an all-nighter. The big test is tomorrow, and you just opened the book to start studying. How come my sleep cycle gets so out of wack? Meredith Knight
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