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The Dangers of Being Really, Really Tired
Sleepy Dog Millionare writes "Brian Palmer, writing for Slate, asks 'Can you die from lack of sleep?' and shockingly, the answer may very well be Yes, you can. Palmer points to 'ground breaking experiments' in the area of sleep research. It turns out that sleep deprivation can actually be deadly in rats. The obvious conclusion is that it is probably deadly in all mammals. So the next time you think you need to pull multiple all-night hack-a-thons, ask yourself if it's worth risking your life for."
I really wish people would take the dangers of even small amounts of sleep deprivation more seriously.
Even missing an hours sleep could be enough to kill some poor sod who happens to be crossing the road at the same time as you miss the red lights.
In the modern world it seems to be macho to go without sleep. In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
Who thinks this is shocking.
We need water. Would you be shocked to find a lack of water can be deadly?
Why would anyone be shocked to find lack of sleep can kill?
If you die from 1 all-nighter then you probably died from something else (very poor health). I think most of science and engineering have been built on all-nighters so sorry, not going to stop.
> In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
In reality, there's more to life than being 'at optimal productivity level' all the time. Work to live, not the other way round. If you have an awesome party on your birthday but are a little less productive the day after, then the world can just suck it up. I'm not saying you should drive while (severely) sleep deprived, it's just that there are many things in life that are worth a little sleep deprivation. Just make sure you understand the consequences of sleep deprivation and use that knowledge to act responsibly.
I don't this is something that happens often under circumstances people normally experience.
First if it was we would already know and not need to be doing the research now, to find out if can be lethal.
Second nature probably has its methods of preventing you from killing yourself in this fashion no matter how dumb you are about trying to stay up.
You usually cannot hold your breath until you die. You might be able to do it with some contrivance like a plastic bag tied around your neck or noose, but if you just sit there in your chair and attempt to hold your breath you will pass out before you die and start breathing automatically when that happens.
I suspect you can't keep yourself awake long enough to die either without getting pretty darn creative.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That's why unions came up. Unfortunately it turned out being something not exactly as good as intended. ^^
Try a lightweight Hollywood model. That is, when everybody is self-employed, and you can have multiple "bosses"/clients and can always hire your own employees/businesses.
You do understand the only reason that works at all in hollywood is because the entire hollywood business is the most union-heavy business in the country, right?
There's no way in hell anyone working for the big studios would be able to make a decent wage if that weren't the case.
Only because the Republican administrations since Reagan did everything they can to destroy labor unions.
The only reason the US has a middle class at all is because of organized labor. If the industrialists in the first few decades of the 20th century had gotten their way, workers in the US would be about where workers in Mexico currently find themselves. We'd probably all be trying to sneak into Canada.
You really have to be ignorant of US history not to realize the importance of the labor movement. By the way, since the all-out attack on unions started, real income of American middle and lower-class workers has declined at a steady rate. If it hadn't been the ready availability of easy credit, our standard of living would have plummeted. Now that the bill's coming due you're going to see very clearly what damage anti-union policies have done.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...understand the joys of lack of sleep for extended periods. You have periods - sometimes weeks on end - where you get interrupted every couple of hours, which means you're not getting much, if any, REM sleep. I know of other parents who say that with multiple young children they have periods of YEARS where everything is just a bit hazy.
There has been some research (can't remember where I saw it) that sleep is vital for moving the day's memories from short term memory into long term memory where it can be accessed. Extended lack of sleep means that new information isn't properly transferred into the cortex and so gets "overwritten" with fresh information, resulting in some memory loss.
I intend to live forever, or die trying. - Groucho Marx
Calorie restriction, or caloric restriction (CR), is a dietary regimen thought to improve health and slow the aging process in some animals
CR is a case where animal models are even less applicable than usual. Humans are tuned up for obvious evolutionary reasons to live about twice as long as one would normally expect for a mammal, well beyond our effective reproductive lifespan.
The average mammal lives about a billion heartbeats. Humans live twice that--way off the scale. Ergo, assuming that life extension techniques that work on other animals will work on us is problematic to say the least.
One of the mechanisms that has been optimized by evolutionary selection in humans to extend our lives is our extreme resistantance to cancer, which is why animal models for cancer (both causes and cures) have been so problematic over the past few decades.
Rats are nocturnal social scavengers, which may make them a better model for sleep research than cancer research, but given how weird the human brain is compared to most other animals it is again quite problematic to simply extrapolate any conclusions from them to us.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Yeah, they call it "death from overwork," but I've rarely seen Japanese salarymen work in the way that I would consider "work." I have decided that the Japanese concept of work has little to do with measurable results and a lot to do with how awful the process was and how long it took.
When the culture puts a lot of value on suffering for your employer, it's no wonder that some people push themselves to suffer so much that it literally kills them. When you live on cigarettes, One Cup single-serving sake, and vending-machine coffee; when you are getting a couple hours of sleep a night, tops; when you are spending 3 hours of your waking day running after trains and then being crammed into them with the other exhausted, smelly people; when you continue this lifestyle for years on end; yeah, you're going to die. And you probably won't even have that many results to show for it.
So much of the "work" that Japanese companies have people do is just kind of meaningless activity. All it does is exhaust people and turn bright, energetic college kids into the dead shells you see riding the train (full disclosure: I'm a university teacher in Japan).
There seems to be a growing movement in Japanese society, however, that is realizing this and pushing back. The economic downturn is helping, too. It used to be that once you landed a job, you were set for life. However, if you ever got fired or downsized, you were screwed for life; no one would ever hire you again. You were damaged goods. Now, the latter is still true, but the former isn't. People get laid off all the time now. Last year a few major companies hired a bunch of new college graduates, those people turned down other offers, and then the companies came back and retracted their offers and paid them about $5k to go away. These people are now both never employed and damaged goods. Hiring only happens once a year here, so they were basically paid $5k to live on for the next year of their lives, after which they got to do the whole grueling interviewing and testing process again, this time with a lingering question about their CV: "Why was this person cut at the last minute by the other company?"
So all of this is building up what I--and any other Western person, who is used to crap like this--can only call a healthy cynicism about employers, and a rejection of their bullshit in favor of an easier life with fewer problems. Temp agencies are taking over as they have done in the US, etc., with all of the bullshit, but all of the benefits as well. I did IT temp work before becoming an academic, and although the lack of security really was pretty scary, the pay was good and the hours were great. I wasn't a salary slave like I am now. Oh, and guess what? Tenure is getting harder to get, so I'm on a year contract anyway! Nothing has changed. Security is dead. Fuck the companies and live your life!
I am hopeful that we here in Japan will see less karoshi as the new generation takes over--the new generation who sees that it's possible to live without being a slave to a company--and that the difficult economic conditions force companies to cut out nonessential make-work activities, increasing efficiency, and evaluating people on what they get done, not how late they stay.
Sleep and lifestyle are important, folks. Don't forget that quality of life is the only thing you should be worried about, because you only get one. If you're having fun staying up all night working (because you might be!) then great! But if you don't like it, don't do it.
I sleep at least 8 hours a night. I am one of the most productive people I know. I'm not interested in dying for my job.
It's refreshing to read some intelligent commentary about unions on this page rather than the typical knee-jerk anti-union comments that generally get attention.
[citation needed]
I'm the AC that you replied to.
It's funny how doctors who specialize in, and lead the field of sleep disorders, differ with you. The doctor that treated me had one of the very first sleep disorder clinics in the US. He's also a recognized expert in his field.
The doctor's expectation for my recovery time was a month. I made it in three weeks. I also know other people who suffer from sleep apnea as I did/do, and none of us had a quick recovery time. It takes time to recover from years of sleep deprivation and not very many people are treated for sleep problems promptly. Most people aren't treated until years after they start displaying the symptoms of the problem.
I also just have to laugh at your "if this was caused by sleep deprivation" statement. You weren't around. You didn't see the before and after. Funny how you feel qualified to disagree with the person who went through it and with his doctor.
We are all slaves to the god Motorola. My wife once asked why the pager had to make such a shrill tone. Told her it was designed that way for a reason.
I really wish people would take the dangers of even small amounts of sleep deprivation more seriously.
Even missing an hours sleep could be enough to kill some poor sod who happens to be crossing the road at the same time as you miss the red lights.
In the modern world it seems to be macho to go without sleep. In reality, depriving yourself of sleep makes you less productive.
Then I hope you drive alone, with the radio off, ALWAYS keep your eyes on the road, don't drink alcohol to maintain optimal reaction at all times.
I'm less worried about sleep deprived drivers than I am about the ones who are talking on the phone, texting, fixing their hair, and yelling at their kids while hauling ass behind me in their SUV's.
I don't think the parent is talking about parties, but people who stay up all night to get a project done. Working more productively means you can spend less time working.
I don't buy into all of that bullshit ADD crap, but perhaps you should get more exercise and eat healthier. It might help more than you know.
How do you know that many people with ADD don't exercise and eat healthy? Or are you simply basing all this on your own observations, rather than scientific ones?
Oh, we're seeing bills coming due, alright. The collapse of the American auto industry is one whopper of an invoice.
Thank you, unions! May I have another?!?
That 11 day record has surely been exceeded by addicts detoxing from drugs like heroin and methadone. I have heard anecdotal evidence from high-dose methadone patients who were arrested and jailed - most prisons will not treat such cases with anything other than cold turkey - of continuing sleep deprivation lasting as long as a month or more. There is of course presently no way to confirm such claims, but detoxing addicts might be a place where scientists could study extreme sleep deprivation without being personally responsible for keeping their subjects awake for long periods, which would be unethical. Of course, many would consider the withholding of any kind of treatment from withdrawing addicts to be unethical also, but that doesn't stop jails from doing it on a routine basis.
Torture? And even more importantly rather dangerous to the victim's life. I can tell you guys if I go 20 hours without sleep I start feeling the effects. Any more than that I'm liable to just fall asleep, even while walking.
There's a fair bit of daylight between being an iron pumping, celery eating health freak, and the lifestyle of the average Slashdotter, especially one who openly admits to having a severe aversion to "boring" tasks.
I think what the OP was (rather crassly) suggesting was that a combination of balanced diet, balanced lifestyle and balanced sense of responsibility could help you (or anyone for that matter) take a more realistic attitude to the boring but necessary parts that make up Life As A Human.
I hate printers.
Is decorating now a necessary part of Life As A Human? To me that seems like a legitimately boring, completely unnecessary task where being drunk/high/sleep-deprived could be legitimately beneficial. But I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong, and that decorating could be an important part of life -- all I ask is a reasonable argument to the effect. Do you have one?
Don't you dare suggest that this question has anything other than a black-or-white solution -- either sleep deprivation is terrible in all circumstances or it has no effect on life. It's absurd to suggest that sleep deprivation might have varying consequences depending on the circumstance, and you're obviously a troll to even suggest such a thing.
Yeah....it must be the unions. Can't have anything to do with the fact that on the whole, non-americans consider cars made by GM, Chrysler etc. to be big ugly unreliable inefficient heaps of crap. That can't go around corners.
Not really. I don't know about the rest of the world, but as far as Europe goes, GM doesn't really have that bad reputation.
This is probably because GM's European line-up (mainly Vauxhalls/Opels, along with Saabs and some ex-Daewoos that are now marketed as "Chevrolet") is quite different to the much-maligned models sold in the US. Not saying that they're all considered the best in their class, or that everyone loves them, but- like most manufacturers nowadays- their European cars probably go from "reasonable" to "very good". (As someone pointed out recently, there are very few outright bad models sold here nowadays).
Although you didn't mention them, it's similar for Ford, whose American models seem to be held in generally low regard (both for design and construction quality). No such problem with the models built and sold in Europe.
Can't really comment on Chrysler because they don't have a significant European market share. They tried during the 60s and 70s, and ended up pulling out. Aside from the Chrysler Neon a few years back- which didn't exactly set the market on fire- most of their models sold here are niche ones.
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You really have to be ignorant of US history not to realize the importance of the labor movement. By the way, since the all-out attack on unions started, real income of American middle and lower-class workers has declined at a steady rate. If it hadn't been the ready availability of easy credit, our standard of living would have plummeted. Now that the bill's coming due you're going to see very clearly what damage anti-union policies have done.
Unfortunately, my history classes rarely made it to the 20th century, and it might have been 1 class session, if that. I would have loved to know more about the 20th century. FYI, yes, I went to public schools. The sad part is that I haven't done much to fill that gap in my knowledge besides watching the History channel. I do see value in labor unions, but I probably don't have the historical knowledge to fully appreciate their role in history.
So you're of the opinion that it isn't possible to live in a place, like a place, and yet still find fault with the way said place does things?
I live in the UK. I enjoy living in the UK. Given an opportunity to live anywhere in the world, there's a decent chance I'd choose the UK. But I know sure as hell that there is A LOT wrong with the place, and that I'd be remiss (read: a complete tool) not to my best as a citizen to right these wrongs- or at the very least acknowledge that they exist.
Japan (full disclaimer: never been there) may be the best place to live in the world, but still have god awful labour laws and working practices. It is the duty of everyone there (including people with a different skin colour) to attempt to make their country a better place.
Anyone who dares hold the opinion that "everyone should just shut up and live with it or fuck off to another country" should be beaten to death with their own sizeable idiocy.