Spending the day sleeping is a terrible feeling, but what really happens to the mind and brain when we don’t get enough sleep?
American Randy Gardner has a scientifically documented record of the longest period of intentional sleep deprivation.
Without the help of stimulants, he managed to stay awake for 264. 4 hours, or 11 days and 24 minutes!
Part of his motivation was to show that lack of sleep is not bad, but he was wrong: little sleep hurts a lot!He suffered from paranoia, hallucinations, mood swings and a number of psychological problems that we will describe below.
In fact, he did not realize that many of the problems that betalked him were the result of lack of sleep.
Sleep deprived brains are not effective and have to work harder to achieve the same results, as has been shown in neuroimaging research, which shows that the brains of sleeping people do not need to pump more blood to the prefrontal cortex, seeking to counteract the effects. deprivation of sleep.
Sleeping very little causes defects in our memory, without short-term memory, a person cannot even remember some numbers of a phone number, let alone perform a complex operation, so when a person suffers from lack of sleep, they tend to be forgotten.
The most frequently asleep man, Randy Gardner, was repeatedly asked to make a simple subtraction, but he did not, arguing that he did not know what he was being asked to do.
Sleep also plays an important role in long-term memory consolidation. As we sleep, our new brain commands integrate and give meaning to what happened. Not only that; learning is also consolidated in our sleep.
A person often has a good attention span: he can distinguish one voice from others, see small objects, identify things that move in a sea of visual information; However, sleeping very little means that your attention will run out much faster without getting enough sleep. , we can’t pay as much attention to the senses we’d like.
The result is, in part, the strange sense of distraction we experience when we’re tired.
After 36 hours without sleep, the ability to plan and coordinate our actions begins to fail.
Evidence shows that the fundamental ability to decide when and how to start or stop an activity decreases rapidly with lack of sleep. Little sleep greatly increases the inability to make decisions.
From the bed, there is little difficulty in making plans or controlling how to initiate or stop actions, and automated brain systems are used. I mean habits.
With fewer hours of sleep, we rely on repetition of actions in the same situations. This news can be positive when it comes to good habits, but what if the habits are bad and you have to adjust them?
Anyone who has played poker late at night knows the strange effects of fatigue on their risk assessment.
Research using card games has revealed that with a few hours of sleep, players attach to a strategic routine. They seem unable to change their game plan based on their experience. Sleep loss involves taking risks and sometimes it would be better to have the clarity to make the decision to stop.
Several researches have shown that not sleeping kills cells and causes brain damage. A recent study in mice found that about 25% of brain cells die from prolonged sleep deprivation. Other studies have shown that there is a loss of integrity of the white substance in the brain, probably due to lack of sleep.
Little sleep is neither good psychologically nor physiologically
If a person regularly suffers from lack of sleep, they begin to feel delusional. Symptoms include psychosis, paranoia, extremely high levels of vital energy, hallucinations, aggression and more.
Important links have been found between insomnia and mental illness. Unfortunately, mental illness itself can, in turn, cause insomnia.
There are different opinions on how to cure insomnia without medication, such as cognitive behavioral evaluation and intervention methods.
One of the things that scares from lack of sleep is that wakefulness hours accumulate over time and the person feels overwhelmed.
If you lose an hour or two of sleep each night, you may not realize that it has a detrimental effect over time. Research indicates that people who drive and sleep little do not realize the severity of the problem.
Getting little sleep or spending the night and driving can be worse than driving in a drunken state. The effects are similar, but the driver is less aware.
After being awake for 11 days, Randy Gardner stated that he slept more than 14 hours the first night, 10 hours the next night and then fully recovered.