Sufficient sleep is a significant health factor in the life of every single individual. Studies have shown that getting enough sleep plays a crucial role in an individual’s life. Failing to sleep is risky to the proper functioning of the body.
Notably, 264 hours, which equates to eleven days, is the longest an individual has gone without sleep, which poses the question: how long can you go without sleep?
This is according to the various investigations conducted to investigate the matter.
Can you die from lack of sleep?
It is improbable that you will die from lack of sleep, there being no recorded static indicating that there is a person that ever died for failing to sleep. However, failing to sleep could have other impactful consequences, such as poor concentration.
Such effects may lead to loss of life in many varying ways, such as:
- Accidents
- Stroke
- Hypertension
Click the button below to get the above-mentioned side effects of lack of sleep under control.
What Happens if You Don’t Sleep for 24 Hours?
Failing to sleep for an entire day is common with many workaholics. However, many people can work with slight sleep breaks for up to two days. One notable thing is that failing to sleep for a day will not cause serious illnesses but experiencing fatigue is almost a guarantee.
Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have correlated failing to sleep for an entire day to a person who consumes alcohol with an alcohol concentration of 0.1%.
Typically, if you do not sleep for twenty-four hours, you’re likely to exhibit the following symptoms:
- Unnecessary anger
- A heightened level of stress
- Poor focus
- Weakness
- Tremors
- Highly irritable
- Decreased coordination levels
- Eyes with dark circles in the under-eye
- Puffy eyes
- Craving for food
What to Expect After 36 Hours Without Sleep?
You can fail to sleep for a day and a half, but your body will exhibit some signs that express an urgent need for sleep. This is because failing to sleep hinders the regulation of common body functions.
Some of the signs include:
- Hormonal imbalances
- Speech impairment
- Inattentiveness
- Making risky decisions
- High level of fatigue
- Reasoning in a manner that is not logical
Sleep Deprivation- What Do You Experience?
What Happens if You Don’t Sleep for 2 Days?
What to expect after 48 hours without sleep? It is important to try to find sleep even if you’re quite busy; small breaks of sleep are helpful.
Failing to sleep for two days (48 hrs.) is health-wise referred to as sleep deprivation. During this time, slight hallucinatory signs may begin to appear.
The most common occurrences following failure to sleep for two days include, but are not limited to:
- High levels of stress
- High level of fatigue
- Feeling extremely tired and weak
- Increased level of irritability
- Being anxious
- Depersonalization
How Long Can You Go Without Sleep Before Hallucinating?
According to studies, Hallucinations are a common symptom in people who stay for an extended time without sleeping.
As such, if you go for three days (72 continuous hours) without sleeping, you’re likely to begin experiencing hallucinations. Hallucinations are one of the dangerous impacts of failing to sleep for extended periods.
What to Expect After 72 Hours Without Sleep?
When you fail to sleep for 72 continuous hours, there is a high probability that you will experience hallucinations, among other symptoms.
Hallucinations are present in varying ways in different people and include the following.
- Feeling like you’re hearing people talking in one or numerous voices
- Physical hallucinations though they are not as common as auditory ones.
- Olfactory hallucinations will make you imagine smells that are not existing at the moment.
- Tactile hallucinations make you feel as though someone or something has touched you.
In addition to the outlined effects, you will also lose concentration and become demotivated so that you will give up accomplishing even the smallest of the tasks. You may also experience paranoia, while your body may begin exhibiting effects that negatively affect your internal organs.
In order to recover the mental side effects of sleep deprivation– Click the button below to schedule your appointment.
What Happens if You Don’t Sleep for 11 Days?
The longest recorded time a person has gone without sleep is 11 days, which is a heightened level of sleep.
Generally, after only about 2 to 3 days without sleep, you should begin experiencing health-related malfunctions.
When you fail to sleep for 11 days which is highly unlikely, you should expect the following conditions:
- Memory loss problems
Sight problems: failure to see clearly [1*] - Difficult in expressing yourself. You cannot speak effectively
- Cognitive rigidity, during which you can only perceive things in one way
- Indecisiveness or extended time to conclude a simple decision
- High blood pressure
- Demotivation
This raises our question again, how long can you go without sleep? Laboratory studies have indicated that it is possible to die after three months if someone loses the ability to sleep. However, this can occur with people who inherit fatal familial insomnia (FFI).
Precisely, investigations on lab animals have indicated that the test animals succumb to death when they are deprived of sleep.
How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?
Your daily sleep requirement may range depending on your age bracket. For instance, children below the teenage level should sleep between 10 and 17 hours, depending on their age. Teenagers and adults need a sleep range of 6 to 10 hours per day.
How Long Can a Human Stay Awake?
At the moment, there are no significant studies that indicate the maximum number of days that someone should stay awake.
After Randy Gardner’s 11-day-sleep deprivation, no other statistic indicates people who have broken the record.
Even with the sleep deprivation, Gardner only exhibited the common symptoms of sleep deprivation, which could disappear without leaving any significant effect.
How to Treat Sleep Deprivation?
How to Recover from Missing a Night of Sleep?
There are several ways that are helpful to recover after failing to sleep, which comprise the following:
- Find some time in the afternoon hours and sleep for about twenty minutes
- During the weekend, sleep sufficiently but do not surpass the normal sleeping time with three hours
- Go to sleep earlier than the norm in the night that follows
- Get more sleep for one or two nights
Sleep deprivation harms the mental and physical health of a person– Click below to prevent it from harming any of these.
Medical Advisory
Going without sleep or sleeping for a few hours a day occurs often. Having enough sleep is important for the proper regulation of body functions. However, medical doctors at EZCare Clinic can help you with sleeping problems, effects related to lack of sleep, mental anxiety, and other mental health conditions.
Click below to schedule your appointment with a mental health professional.
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