Is It Possible to Stay Awake for Over 100 Hours Without Taking Any Naps?

[Greg Bernhardt]

I watched a tv show on sleep deprivation that stated, after 5 days without sleep you will die. Anyone believe this man hasn't taken a few cat naps?

http://www.fox12news.com/Global/story.asp?S=8126725

 

[Moonbear]

It's funny how people don't count the 20 min they fall asleep at their desk here and there when they're bragging about staying awake for days. Not that fragmented sleep is good for you either, but better than none at all.

 

[Evo]

Those no sleep stunts allow for naps. It's like the "longest kiss" or longest "sitting in a ferris wheel", the people are allowed breaks to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, etc... Ok, that just makes it bogus IMO.

 

[stevecaudill]

I've Stayed Awake For Over 72 Hours..no Prob

There was not too long ago a guy in England who stayed awake for 11 days. I sometimes go 48 hours without sleep, once I went 72 hours. Anyone can train themselves to do this, and without having to drink too much caffeine. When I finally sleep I only need about 10-12 hours to 'catch up.' And you won't die or go schizo if you go without sleep, at least I don't. (I think if you go without WATER for 5 days you could possibly die of dehydration)

 

[jim mcnamara]

After a period of sleep deprivation you begin to microsleep - short periods of say 30 seconds when your brain sort of turns off. The problem is: 30 seconds is more than long enough for you to kill yourself and 50 other people if you are behind the wheel of a car.

Deliberate sleep deprivation is a terrible idea. IMO.

 

[Poop-Loops]

I tend to microsleep during my lectures. Leads to some very weird dreams.

 

[baywax]

I'm up for the longest kiss contest. Is there a plug-in for that?

 

[stevecaudill]

I vaguely remember there was a Nobel prize winner (either physics or chemistry I think) who fell asleep behind the wheel in Florida and killed someone. I think there was testimony he was sleep deprived. He was in his 60's or early 70's, and got sentenced to several years in jail.
Best idea is get 8 hours of sleep and do what Ben Franklin wrote: early to bed, early to rise, etc...

 

[Moonbear]

I tend to microsleep during my lectures. Leads to some very weird dreams.

I tend to microsleep during my lectures...leads to some very weird lectures. (Sorry, couldn't resist. When giving the same lecture three times in a day, I do seem to go into auto-pilot mode, though.)

 

[stevecaudill]

Here's the info on the Nobel winner who fell asleep while driving causing fatal wreck:
Nobel winner sentenced for traffic death, from MSNBC:
"Mon., Nov. 7, 2005, SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A Nobel Prize-winning physicist was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for killing a man and injuring seven other people while going more than 100 mph in his sports car. John Robert Schrieffer, 74, a Florida State University professor who taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara until 1991, pleaded no contest July 25 to vehicular manslaughter for crashing into a van last year. Schrieffer had nine previous speeding tickets and was driving with a suspended license at the time. His attorney said the scientist fell asleep at the wheel of his Mercedes-Benz."

Schrieffer won the 1972 Nobel Prize in physics, sharing it with JOHN BARDEEN, born 1908, professor of electrical engineering and physics at the University of Illinois Urbana. and Leon Cooper, born 1930, professor of physics at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
The award was for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory. Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer developed in 1957 a theory of superconductivity, which gave a complete theoretical explanation of the phenomenon.
The new theory demonstrated that the interaction between the electrons and the lattice leads to the formation of bound pairs of electrons, which are often called Cooper-pairs. The different pairs are strongly coupled to each other which leads to a complex collective pattern in which a considerable fraction of the total number of conduction electrons are coupled together to form the superconducting state. Because of the characteristic coupling between all the electrons, one cannot break up a single pair of electrons without perturbing also all the others and this requires an amount of energy which must exceed a critical value. Many of the remarkable properties of superconductors can be understood qualitatively from the structure of this correlated many-electron state.

 

[stevecaudill]

Auto-pilot...

I tend to microsleep during my lectures...leads to some very weird lectures. (Sorry, couldn't resist. When giving the same lecture three times in a day, I do seem to go into auto-pilot mode, though.)

I go into auto-pilot when I'm driving to work, which reminds me of some recent articles I have been reading on the topic of "What is Consciousness?", some good articles on that topic in Scientic American's and Discover magazine's websites, and here's updated info on the world record for staying awake, plus 39 other facts on sleep:

40 FACTS ABOUT SLEEP YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW…
(OR WERE TOO TIRED TO THINK ABOUT)

-The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It’s impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you’re sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you’re still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It’s possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain’s sleep-wake clock.

- British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers’ body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers’ retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The “natural alarm clock” which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a “neural switch” in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain’s sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That’s why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won’t dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you’ve slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- Most of what we know about sleep we’ve learned in the past 25 years.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

 

[Tsu]

I tend to microsleep during my lectures...leads to some very weird lectures. (Sorry, couldn't resist. When giving the same lecture three times in a day, I do seem to go into auto-pilot mode, though.)

Oh, I was SO hoping you would reply with just exactly that!1111 :rofl: