Lack of sleep may be deadly

How many hours do you sleep?

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S.A.M.

S.A.M.

uniquely dreadful
Valued Senior Member
People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study released on Monday.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleep from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk of death from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.

The findings highlight a danger in busy modern lifestyles, Francesco Cappuccio, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Warwick’s medical school, told the annual conference of the British Sleep Society in Cambridge. “A third of the population of the UK and over 40% in the US regularly sleep less than five hours a night, so it is not a trivial problem,” he said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...p_may_be_deadly_Study/articleshow/2399621.cms
 
On average I get about 6-7 hours of sleep, so I flagged '5-8 hours'.
I recently heard on the news that it's healthier to get out of bed late ('sleeping out' ? :shrug:) than to get up early in the morning. I can't find any articles on it though.
 
Usually six hours. I feel crappy if I get less, even just a little less (last nite I slept about 5 1/2 hours, and I feel it).
 
I usually get 4 or 5 hours sleep. If I'm up more than 30 hours in a stretch I sometimes sleep 8-10 afterwards, but usually I get in my standard 5 and am wide awake even then.
 
I go to bed 10-11 pm, read for about an hr, get up at 6. I used to get a lot more sleep before the kids were born. Now that they sleep longer, I don't.
 
I try to sleep 7 hours a day(this longevity test I took online recomended I do) but sometimes I wake up in 3-4, and if I didn't sleep the day before I end up sleeping a lot longer. Then I pass out sometimes at different friends houses if I take some pills and drink with them, but I always wake up early in the morning(like 4 or 5) and start walking home on those days. Then when I get home I usually pass out again. I think I sleep enough.
 
:bawl: my sleep times are prone to get messed and I've had a few years with probably unhealthy levels of sleeping....

Sleeping is a major waste of time..... one third of our whole life..... :mad:
 
about 7 on average at night but often take 1 to 2 hour nap after lunch if nothing is pressing. Post one comments on blood pressure also. Mine resting is 120/80 ok or good for my age. Immediately after 20 half-olimpic non-stop fast laps, pulse is about 160 in first 15 seconds average, 140 averaged over first 30 seconds and 130 over the first minute. I am happy with this quick recovery rate. BTW, title is very correct. In studies on mice (non-injurous electric shocks used to keep the awake, they die much sooner than if deprived of water.)
 
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Varda said:
10 days without any sleep will hmm.. kill you
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I beg to differ....

"Thai Ngoc (born 1942) is a Vietnamese insomniac.

He is best known for being awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights, according to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien.[1] At the time of the report, Ngoc suffered from no apparent ill effect (other than the fact that he cannot sleep). He was mentally sound and was able to carry 100kg of pig feed down a 4km road. It was said that Ngoc acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973. In April, 2007, however, Ngoc reported that he was beginning to feel grumpy due to the lack of sleep.[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Ngoc
 
here:

The easy experimental answer to this question is 264 hours (about 11 days). In 1965, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old high school student, set this apparent world-record for a science fair. Several other normal research subjects have remained awake for eight to 10 days in carefully monitored experiments. None of these individuals experienced serious medical, neurological, physiological or psychiatric problems. On the other hand, all of them showed progressive and significant deficits in concentration, motivation, perception and other higher mental processes as the duration of sleep deprivation increased. Nevertheless, all experimental subjects recovered to relative normality within one or two nights of recovery sleep. Other anecdotal reports describe soldiers staying awake for four days in battle, or unmedicated patients with mania going without sleep for three to four days.

The more difficult answer to this question revolves around the definition of "awake." As mentioned above, prolonged sleep deprivation in normal subjects induces altered states of consciousness (often described as "microsleep"), numerous brief episodes of overwhelming sleep, and loss of cognitive and motor functions. We all know about the dangerous, drowsy driver, and we have heard about sleep-deprived British pilots who crashed their planes (having fallen asleep) while flying home from the war zone during World War II. Randy Gardner was "awake" but basically cognitively dysfunctional at the end of his ordeal.

In the case of rats, however, continuous sleep deprivation for about two weeks or more inevitably caused death in experiments conducted in Allan Rechtschaffen¿s sleep laboratory at the University of Chicago. Two animals lived on a rotating disc over a pool of water, separated by a fixed wall. Brainwaves were recorded continuously into a computer program that almost instantaneously recognized the onset of sleep. When the experimental rat fell asleep, the disc was rotated to keep it awake by bumping it against the wall and threatening to push the animal into the water. Control rats could sleep when the experimental rat was awake but were moved equally whenever the experimental rat started to sleep. The cause of death was not proven but was associated with whole body hypermetabolism.

In certain rare human medical disorders, the question of how long people can remain awake raises other surprising answers, and more questions. Morvan¿s fibrillary chorea or Morvan¿s syndrome is characterized by muscle twitching, pain, excessive sweating, weight loss, periodic hallucinations, and severe loss of sleep (agrypnia). Michel Jouvet and his colleagues in Lyon, France, studied a 27-year-old man with this disorder and found he had virtually no sleep over a period of several months. During that time he did not feel sleepy or tired and did not show any disorders of mood, memory, or anxiety. Nevertheless, nearly every night between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., he experienced a 20 to 60-minute period of auditory, visual, olfactory, and somesthetic (sense of touch) hallucinations, as well as pain and vasoconstriction in his fingers and toes. In recent investigations, Morvan¿s Syndrome has been attributed to serum antibodies directed against specific potassium (K+) channels in cell and nerve membranes.
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http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_ques...01-1CD1-B4A8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catID=3
 
I stayed up for three days in a row during finals week once. In the end, I fell asleep while eating a big plate of pasta. I was just eating dinner when my head just collapsed right into the pasta! So I cleaned up and went to bed.
 
Yonescoh said:
I beg to differ....

"Thai Ngoc (born 1942) is a Vietnamese insomniac.

He is best known for being awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights, according to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien.[1] At the time of the report, Ngoc suffered from no apparent ill effect (other than the fact that he cannot sleep). He was mentally sound and was able to carry 100kg of pig feed down a 4km road. It was said that Ngoc acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973. In April, 2007, however, Ngoc reported that he was beginning to feel grumpy due to the lack of sleep.[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Ngoc
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Not for one second do I believe that. He can say whatever he wants, but he's sleeping.
 
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