Is it possible to do without sleep? How long can you live without sleep.

The question of how long a person can live without sleep is of interest to scientists and workaholics. But all those who tried to remain able-bodied at the same time failed. People with superpowers or disabilities can do without sleep.

Various studies conducted to determine how many people can lead a normal life without sleep have shown that the brain cannot be deceived. Chronic sleep deprivation destroy the body. Five to seven days of wakefulness lead to grave consequences- physical exhaustion, severe mental disorders. Therefore, experiments on humans are not carried out. But there were sleepless volunteers who risked their health for the sake of glory. Randy Gardner, who lives in California, proved that you can go 264 hours without sleep. The more the young man was awake, the more side effects: hallucinations, memory loss, dizziness. After the end of the experiment, the guy slept off, the functions returned to normal. Gardner is still alive, adheres to a normal regime, does not repeat more risky experiments.

The next record holder, who was interested in how long you can live without sleep, was the Briton Tony Wright. The man said that his brain would be awake and rest at the same time, like dolphins. While one hemisphere is working, the other is resting. After the experiment, Tony admitted that with each sleepless day, his health deteriorated. Weakness and irritability were replaced by hallucinations, thought disorder. Record without sleep (275 hours) Wright was not easy. On the eleventh day he became sensitive to bright light, loud sounds. There were symptoms of speech disorders, memory lapses. The problems disappeared after Tony slept off. Representatives of the Guinness Book of Records refused to register the achievement because of the danger of such experiments.

Experiments have proven that people who do not sleep at night will not be able to achieve success, even though they have more time. Man has been adapting to the change of wakefulness and sleep for thousands of years. While the body is resting, important processes. The pancreas produces more insulin. The adrenal cortex synthesizes adrenaline, which is needed during the day. At night, the production of growth hormone, which is involved in metabolism, is activated. During the period of the physiological state of rest and rest, brain cells are restored in order to actively function during the day.

scientific experiments

The American neurophysiologist Nathaniel Kleitman experienced first hand how long one can go without sleep. He suggested that hallucinations during prolonged wakefulness are REM sleep with dreams. The scientist managed to fix, which also prevents forced wakefulness. After five days of insomnia, delta waves were recorded on the electroencephalogram, which appear in slow sleep. So the brain defends the right to rest and recovery after pathological processes begin.

The body of a living being can be compared to a computer. The machine cannot work for a long time, it needs to be restarted. Sleep is a reboot of the body. Soviet scientist Yakov Levin studied the effect of prolonged wakefulness on the psyche and body of people who work daily. The test young men did not sleep for 36 hours and felt good, but after the examination they found: a decrease in overall activity, associative and short-term memory, motivation, and an increase in anxiety.

Biochemical studies have shown that the level of catecholamine has decreased. The hormone affects the speed of thinking, the assimilation of information, emotional stability, and is involved in the formation of behavior. After the experiment, sleep lasted longer than usual, the indicators returned to normal. How much a person can go without sleep depends on the physical and mental health. The consequences were not the same for everyone. Physically fit and balanced study participants recovered faster.

military medics different countries they are researching psychostimulants that will allow special forces soldiers not to sleep for several days. The funds help fight sleep and fatigue, but after stopping the intake, mental and physical exhaustion is observed.

Exceptions to the rules

A kind of challenge to nature is a person who never sleeps. Ukrainian Fyodor Nesterchuk and Belarusian Yakov Tsiperovich spend several decades without sleep at all. Jacob lost the ability to sleep after clinical death. At first, the man's body painfully perceived insomnia, but soon adapted to this condition. Tsiperovich leads a normal life. To give the brain a chance to rest, it meditates. Except low temperature doctors do not find other abnormalities.

Sleep deprivation facts

• The risk of premature death is increased by 15%.
• People who sleep little and don't get enough sleep are 25% more likely to suffer from depression.
• A week of systematic lack of sleep reduces intelligence by 15%.
• A driver who has not slept for 17-18 hours is less attentive than a person with moderate alcohol intoxication.

It has not yet been established how much you can do without sleep, so as not to harm your health. Many people have proven that it is possible to reduce physiological state rest and relaxation to a minimum. But the body will eventually respond to such deprivation.

• Valery I. Shestopalov, Yuri Panchin, Olga S. Tarasova, Dina Gaynullina and Vladimir M. Kovalzon Pannexins Are Potential New Players in the Regulation of Cerebral Homeostasis during Sleep-Wake Cycle Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, July 2017, Volume 11, Article 210
• V.B. Dorokhov, A.N. Puchkova, A.O. Taranov, V.V. Ermolaev, T.V. Tupitsyna, P.A. Slominskii, and V.V. Dementienko Gene Polymorphisms Associated with Sleep and Cognitive Functions and Their Associations with Accident Proneness in Shift-Working Bus Drivers Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, Vol. 48, no. May 4, 2018
• Vladimir M. Kovalzon Ascending reticular activating system of the brain Translational Neuroscience and Clinics, Vol. 2, no. 4, December 2016, pp. 275–285

List of used literature:

• Kovrov G.V. (ed.) Quick Guide on clinical somnology M: “MEDpress-inform”, 2018.
• Poluektov M.G. (ed.) Somnology and sleep medicine. National leadership in memory of A.N. Wayne and Ya.I. Levina M.: "Medforum", 2016.
• A.M. Petrov, A.R. Giniatullin Neurobiology of sleep: modern look (tutorial) Kazan, GKMU, 2012

Everyone, probably, at least once in their life, but one night did not sleep. Whether it was due to night parties that smoothly transition into the next day or preparation for the session, or was it a work necessity - usually, if possible, a person, if he has not slept all day, tries to catch up on the next night. But there are times when it is not possible to sleep 2 days in a row or even 3 days. Emergencies at work, time trouble at the session and you have to not sleep for 2-3 days. What happens if you don't sleep for a long time?

Sleep is the rest of the body, it is responsible for processing and storing information, restores immunity. Previously, lack of sleep was used as a torture to extort secrets. However, recently, experts submitted a report to the US Senate that such testimony cannot be trusted, because in the absence of sleep, people hallucinate and sign false confessions.

If you do not sleep for 1 day, nothing terrible will happen. A single violation of the daily routine will not lead to any serious consequences unless you decide to spend the next day behind the wheel. It all depends on individual features organism. For example, if a person is used to such a work schedule, when after the night shift there is still work during the day, then he will simply finish these hours the next night.

During the next day after a sleepless night, a person will feel drowsiness, which can be slightly relieved by a cup of coffee, fatigue, a slight deterioration in concentration and memory. Some feel slight chills. A person may suddenly fall asleep in public transport, sitting in line to the doctor, for example. The next night, there may be difficulty falling asleep, this is due to an excess of dopamine in the blood, but the sleep will be strong.

One thing is certain if you're wondering something like: what if you stay up all night the eve of your exam? There is only one answer - nothing good. A sleepless night does not contribute to the readiness of the brain for stress. The thought process, on the contrary, will become slower, decrease intellectual ability. Distractedness and inattention are companions sleepy state. Of course, a person will look worse - the skin will gray color, there will be bags under the eyes, some puffiness of the cheeks.

Experts note that it is enough to skip only the first 24 hours of sleep and violations begin. brain activity. German researchers noted the appearance mild symptoms schizophrenia: distorted sense of time, sensitivity to light, incorrect color perception, incoherent speech. The emotional background begins to change; how longer man does not sleep - the more exaggerated emotions become, laughter is replaced by causeless sobs.

If you don't sleep for 2 nights in a row

Of course, situations may arise when you have to stay awake for 2 days in a row. This is a more severe condition for the body, which can affect work. internal organs and it will manifest itself not just by drowsiness, but also by a malfunction, for example, of the gastrointestinal tract. From heartburn to diarrhea - the range of sensations experienced can be very diverse. At the same time, a person's appetite will increase (an obvious advantage will be given to salty and fatty foods) and the body, in response to stress, will start the function of producing hormones responsible for insomnia. Oddly enough, during this period, it will not be easy for a person to fall asleep, even with a strong desire.
after 2 sleepless nights in the body, glucose metabolism is disturbed, work is deteriorating immune system. The person becomes more open to the effects of viruses.

After two sleepless nights, the strongest person will become:

• scattered;
• inattentive;
• his concentration will deteriorate;
• intellectual abilities will decrease;
• speech will become more primitive;
• coordination of movements will worsen.

If you don't sleep for 3 days

What happens if you don't sleep all night for 3 days in a row? The main sensations will be the same as after two sleepless days. Coordination of movements will be disturbed, speech will worsen, a nervous tic may appear. This condition is characterized by loss of appetite and mild nausea. The experimenter will have to constantly wrap himself up - he will have a chill, his hands will become cold. There may be such a state when the gaze is focused on a particular point and it becomes difficult to look away.

It must be said that under conditions of prolonged inability to sleep, a person begins to experience states of failure - when he turns off for a while and then comes to his senses again. This is not a superficial sleep, a person simply turns off the controlling parts of the brain. For example, he may not notice how he missed 3-5 stations in the subway, or when walking down the street, he may not remember how he passed the section of the path. Or suddenly completely forget about the purpose of the trip.

If you don't sleep for 4 days

What will remain of the human brain if you do not sleep for 4 days is not clear. After all, if you don’t sleep for a day, the ability to process information is already reduced by a third, two days of being awake will take 60% of a person’s mental abilities. After 4 days no sleep on mental capacity a person, even if he is 7 spans in the forehead, cannot be counted, consciousness begins to get confused, strong irritability appears. Plus, there is a trembling of the limbs, a feeling of waddedness of the body, and it worsens greatly. appearance. The person becomes like an old man.

If you don't sleep for 5 days

If you don’t sleep for 5 days, hallucinations and paranoia will come to visit. Possibly start panic attacks- the most nonsense can serve as an occasion. Appears during panic attacks cold sweat increased sweating, increased heartbeat. After 5 days without sleep, the work of important parts of the brain slows down, and neural activity weakens.

Serious violations will occur in the parietal zone, which is responsible for mathematical abilities and logic, so a person can hardly add even 2 plus 2. In this situation, it is not at all surprising that if you do not sleep for so long, there will be problems with speech. Violations in the temporal lobe will provoke its incoherence, and hallucinations will begin to occur after the malfunction of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. These may be visual hallucinations similar to dreams or sound.

If you do not sleep for 6-7 days

Few people are capable of such an extreme experiment with their body. So, let's see what happens if you don't sleep for 7 days. The person will become very strange and give the impression of a drug addict. It will be impossible to communicate with him. Some people who decided on this experiment developed Alzheimer's disease syndromes, severe hallucinations, and paranoid manifestations. The record holder for insomnia, a student from America, Randy Gardner, had a strong trembling of the limbs and he could not even perform the simplest addition of numbers: he simply forgot the task.

After 5 days without sleep, the body will experience the strongest stress of all systems., brain neurons become inactive, the heart muscle wears out, which manifests itself painful sensations, immunity due to the passivity of T-lymphocytes ceases to resist viruses, the liver also begins to experience enormous stress.

Oddly enough, after such a long state of not sleeping, all symptoms will disappear literally after the first 8 hours of sleep. That is, a person can oversleep for 24 hours after a long wakefulness, but even if he is awakened after 8 hours, the body will almost completely restore its functions. This, of course, is the case if the experiments with sleep are one-time. If you constantly force your body, not letting it rest for two or three days, then it will end with a whole bunch of diseases, including cardiovascular and hormonal systems, gastrointestinal tract and, of course, a psychiatric plan.

List of used literature:

• Kovrov G.V. (ed.) Brief guide to clinical somnology M: “MEDpress-inform”, 2018.
• Poluektov M.G. (ed.) Somnology and sleep medicine. National leadership in memory of A.N. Wayne and Ya.I. Levina M.: "Medforum", 2016.
• A.M. Petrov, A.R. Giniatullin Neurobiology of sleep: a modern view (textbook) Kazan, GKMU, 2012

Sleep plays important role In human life. Rest is necessary for every organ, especially the brain, which without it will not be able to fully work. How many people can live without sleep?

Scientific research

For many years, scientists have been asking the question: "How long can a person live without sleep?" and

experiment on this topic. So, once several volunteers gathered in one room and began the study. The result showed that most people fell asleep after two days without sleep, and only a few lasted five days. During this period, the volunteers experienced severe fatigue, light and lack of strength. After about two days, the brain starts shutting down automatically, sinking into superficial sleep. If a person does not perform any actions, then he falls asleep in any position.

Records

Many people have tried to fix how long a person can live without sleep. The absolute record listed in the Guinness book is 12 days. During this time, the European, who had not slept for so long, began to have headaches. The experiment had a negative impact on his health.

However, there are people who have not slept for a longer time. So, one Vietnamese has not slept for 27 years and at the same time feels great. And there are many such cases in the world. What explains this? The individual ability of the body to withstand heavy loads. According to scientists, such people have phenomenal abilities, which lie in the fact that their organs can be turned off individually, resting in this way. In fact, if you train your body, then this is quite possible.

Why should a person sleep?

Trying to find out how long a person can live without sleep, people experiment on themselves. But you should not do this, because you can completely ruin your body. After the first day without sleep, the state of health worsens, pressure is disturbed, irritability appears. Two days without sleep deprives a person of strength, it is difficult for him to think. After the third day appears depression, Then it only gets worse: a person sees nightmares, hallucinations, hears extraneous sounds or voices. Existing chronic diseases are exacerbated, shortness of breath, palpitations appear. Gradually, brain cells die, which leads to the inevitable death of a person.

How many people can go without sleep? Why not experiment?

How many people can live without sleep without harming their health? The answer is obvious: 15-20 hours. There must be at least one sleep per day for at least 4 hours. But this is an extreme case. In general, a person needs a full, eight-hour sleep once every 24 hours.

Do not try to check for yourself how long a person can live without sleep. It all depends on the body and its endurance. Some people can easily stay awake for five days and feel good, while others become lethargic, tense and painful in a day. Sleep is not the case when it is worth experimenting. Otherwise, you will have to prove how much a person can live without sleep, at the cost of his own life or health.

It's amazing what we don't waste time on. According to statistics, for 78 years of life, a person spends a total of 9 years watching TV, 4 years driving a car, 92 days sitting in the toilet and 48 days having sex. But all these numbers pale in comparison to the time spent sleeping. As studies show, a person devotes 25 out of 78 years of his life to sleep, which is 32% of his entire life. You involuntarily wonder: why is sleep so important to us? And how long can we live without it?

Why is sleep needed?

Agree, it would be very disappointing if we were to waste a third of our lives in vain. Actually, sleep performs somewhat very important functions . Firstly, it allows our body to relax and process the information received during the whole day. Secondly, as scientists suggest, sleep "restarts" all body systems, and also restores the immune system and normalizes metabolism.

Moreover, lack of sleep, according to doctors, leads to obesity, an increased risk of diabetes, heart problems, depression and other serious ailments.

What happens if you don't sleep for a long time?

When we stay up late, the body reminds us that it's time to go to bed: we get tired, we feel drowsiness, absent-mindedness, heaviness in the eyes, short term memory getting worse. If we continue to struggle with sleep for a few more days, our consciousness will begin to get confused, there will be sharp drops moods, paranoia and hallucinations. This condition is well known to truck drivers who are driving for many hours. People begin to see shadows, non-existent objects, and even just “turn off” while driving.

Lack of sleep seriously disrupts the functioning of all body systems. From lack of sleep, a person increases blood pressure and the content of stress hormones in the blood, at the same time the heart rhythm is disturbed and interruptions in the immune system begin. As a result, people who do not get enough sleep become irritable and get sick more often. Fortunately, most of these problems disappear after a good night's sleep.

One way or another, scientists argue that the need for sleep is so strong that it outweighs even the feeling of hunger. In the end, your brain will simply fall asleep, despite all conscious attempts to fight it.

Can you not sleep at all?

Medicine knows many cases when for a long time people didn't sleep at all. Such symptoms, for example, appear in patients with rare genetic disease called fatal familial insomnia. The disease is inherited and occurs in only 40 families in the world. The disease begins at the age of 30 to 60 years and lasts from 7 to 36 months, after which the patient dies.

The disease causes serious damage to the brain, in particular to the departments responsible for sleep. Because of this, patients suffer from severe insomnia, panic attacks, phobias and hallucinations. In the last 9 months of life, a person completely stops sleeping and quickly loses weight. In the end, the patient stops talking and responding to the environment, after which he dies. Despite its name, fatal familial insomnia does not kill with lack of sleep itself, but with severe brain damage that causes death.

Numerous experiments show that insomnia itself is not fatal, but the causes that cause it are sometimes capable of killing.

In the 1980s, scientists at the University of Chicago conducted an experiment on rats. They placed the rodents on special discs above water trays. When the rat began to doze (an encephalogram showed this), the disk turned, pushing the rodent towards the water, causing it to wake up. After a month of such treatment, all rats died, although the causes of their death remained unclear. According to scientists, most likely the culprit was the stress of awakening, which the rats experienced about a thousand times a day. It was he who could wear out the systems of their body. Among other symptoms, the rats showed impaired body temperature regulation and weight loss despite an increase in appetite.

How long can a person go without sleep?

Randy Gardner of San Diego, set in 1964, is often cited as an example of the longest stay awake. As a 17-year-old high school student, Gardner conducted this experiment as an extracurricular scientific work. According to scientists observing him, Gardner did not sleep for 264 hours (slightly more than 11 days).

In 2012, a tragic incident in China received wide publicity. Because of nervous exhaustion A football fan has died after not sleeping for 11 days trying not to miss a single game of the European Football Championship.

Science for certain don't know how long you can go without sleep. Perhaps it's for the best: in view of the harm that people do to themselves with similar experiences, the compilers of the Guinness Book of Records decided in the last decade not to record achievements in this category anymore.

Scientists from all over the world recognize the importance of a good night's rest for the proper functioning of the body. It is in sleep that the brain rests and recovers, forces appear for the next cycle of wakefulness. But how long can a person live without sleep? To this question, researchers long years searched for an answer, including through experiments on volunteers.

It is impossible to give an exact answer to how many hours of sleep a person needs. It depends on individual characteristics, age, physical activity. However, there are average data that adults should adhere to. You need to sleep an average of 7-8 hours a day. Scientists believe that this time will be enough for rest.

In some cases, people sleep a little longer or a little less and feel great. Therefore, the main indicator that there is enough rest is the state of health. By the way, children need to sleep more - from 18 to 10 hours (with age, this figure decreases).

The value of sleep for a person

The body of the average person needs a constant change of cycles of rest and wakefulness. Sleep allows you to restore the energy expended during the day and gain strength for normal functioning. With insomnia, there are problems with the perception of the world, memory, and solving simple problems. It has been shown that prolonged absence good rest plunges the person into depression.

In China, there was even an execution of insomnia, in which a person was not allowed to sleep. As a result of complete exhaustion, the condemned died. It didn't take that long.

Modern researchers cite data according to which, after one sleepless night, working capacity is reduced by 30%, after two - by 50%. Several days without sleep bring a person to the brink of insanity, sometimes with irreversible consequences.

Changes in the state of the body with deviations from the norm

Scientists identify several stages pathological processes occurring with a person deprived of rest:

1. After the first sleepless night, the tone of the body decreases, the person begins to work worse and does not feel very well. The pressure rises, there is a feeling of irritability.
2. The second day without sleep leads to a breakdown. A person cannot work because he does not think well, the ability to correctly express his own thoughts is lost.
3. After three sleepless nights, depression sets in, other symptoms are noted neurological disorder. There are problems with vision, hearing, coordination of the limbs.
4. The fourth day is characterized by exacerbation chronic diseases, the appearance of hallucinations, extreme irritability.
5. After the fifth sleepless night, brain cells begin to break down, and there is a risk of death.

With a longer absence of rest, they begin to occur irreversible changes. If a person does not fall asleep, but continues to be awake, the following disorders develop:

• mental disorders;
• hand tremor;
• Alzheimer's disease;
• there are problems in the work of internal organs.

If we talk about how long a person can live without rest, the data is individual. For several days of lack of sleep, they threaten such malfunctions in the work of internal organs that a person can die.

scientific experiments

Experts have repeatedly tried to find out how much time a person can go without sleep. One of the most cruel experiments is the experience of Soviet scientists, staged in the 40s of the last century.

The subjects were political prisoners who were guaranteed freedom if they could stay awake for a month. They were locked up in a room filled with a special gas that kept them awake. For the first two days, nothing foreshadowed trouble, but already on the fifth day of the experiment, all participants developed symptoms of psychological disorders.

After 9 days, the subjects were seized by a wild hysteria, which they managed to calm down with difficulty. The experiment continued for several more days. All prisoners showed clear signs madness. The experiment was interrupted only towards the end of the second week, when the participants in the experiment tore one of the subjects to shreds and tried to tear their own skin. All were urgently hospitalized. Those who survived were able to restore their psyche, but were afraid to fall asleep until the end of their lives.

Another experiment was set up in 1964 in the USA. The volunteer was a schoolboy Randy Gardner, who managed to go without sleep for 11 days. Observing his condition, scientists found that after a couple of days of lack of rest, headaches appear, and by the end of the experience, symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, problems with memory, speech, vision, hearing, and hallucinations appear.

Records of maximum stay without sleep

There are not so many officially confirmed cases when a person could stay awake for more than 5 days. Most experimenters ended their experiments at the end of several sleepless nights. Randy Gardner was able to withstand 11 days.

The man who got into the Guinness Book of Records was the American Robert McDonalds, who lasted 453 hours without sleep (almost 19 days). The man turned out to be more enduring than the rest of the experimenters, and was able to almost completely recover after the completion of the experiment. However, he still had some memory problems. His name was included in the Guinness Book of Records, but later they refused to enter new data on a long absence of rest there. This was done so that people would not try to do dubious experiments that lead to loss of health.

Life without sleep

History knows cases when people did not sleep for much more time. True, not on their own initiative. After a severe fever, Vietnamese Tai Ngoc has not slept for 38 years. His compatriot, Nguyen Van Kha, has been awake for 28 years. The man says that once, when trying to sleep, he felt that he was burning alive, and has since stopped sleeping.

Such cases are known in Europe. Englishman Eustace Burnett stopped sleeping just like that. The man says that one evening he realized that he did not feel sleepy. The desire to take a nap did not arise from him even once in 56 years. At night, Eustace most often solves crossword puzzles.

Another incident occurred in the late 70s with Yakov Tsiperovich. The man was poisoned by his wife, for some time he was in a coma. When Jacob woke up, he found that he had stopped wanting to sleep. This lasted for 16 years, after which the man was still able to fall asleep.

Scientists have repeatedly conducted experiments to understand the nature of the changes that occur with people who do not sleep for a long time. The result is disappointing - even a few days without a night's rest threaten, if not death, then the occurrence serious problems with health and mentality.

Without sleep, a person can do about the same amount as without water - 5 days. In both cases, irreversible changes occur. But without water, a person slowly dies, and in the absence of sleep, he experiences at least pain only of a psychological nature. Therefore, do not forget about the importance of proper rest. Thanks to quality sleep can solve many health problems.