The cure to end the need for sleep?

[Dedpuhl]

I think I remember from my psychology class that sleep is needed to replenish a fluid in the brain(is this true?) Once this fluid is used up, one feels tired and must sleep for this fluid to accumulate again.

I sure wish there was a drug that would trigger the production of this fluid so that I could stay awake for days. Working graveyards full-time and going to college full-time is really getting to me. I fall asleep in half my classes. I fall asleep at work. I just need to stay up 3..maybe 4 days/nights a week.

Sleep is suck when you got lots of work to do

 

[SaX0N]

i'd love to never have to sleep
although it might make you a bit crazy, its a risk i'm willing to take

 

[damocles]

crazy

hee hee

never

 

[Elledan]

Sleep is necessary to repair the neural pathways: the nerve-cells which are not only necessary to control our body, but also contain our conscious (the cerebrum) and the 'lower' functions of our body (cerebellum and the brain stem).

When a living being is awake, those nerve cells get damaged and need to be repaired. Therefore the activity in those nerve cells needs to be decreased. This is what we call 'sleep'.

Without sleep, the neural pathways will become seriously damaged until the creature can no longer function and it will die.

Sorry Dedpuhl, but I don't think that there will be a way to live without sleep in the near future

BTW a good 'alternative' would be to increase the speed of the repair of nerve cells, using a technology like the Borg use in Star Trek.

 

[Napalm381]

There's already a way to go without sleep for several days- meth.

 

[damocles]

Ok
What about people that sleep 3-4 hours a night all their lives (like me) and seem to function normally. Does that mean their 'neural pathways' recover faster or that they are being more damaged over time?

 

[cbwolf]

I find it quite easy to stay awake for 2 - 3 days.
All i need is my pc, few movies, pizza, beer/pepsi/jolt cola and some games to play on my pc.

It is ecspecially easy at lans, i stayed awake for 3 days playing ut, cs and q3a at the last lan i went to. The only downside is that after about 2 days of no sleep i found everything funny, i mean everything. One of my friends spilt pepsi onto my keyboard which funked up and all i could do was laugh.

This may be a side effect of those nerve cells dying.

 

[hyperphate]

Is this why peoples minds feel clear when they wake up?

 

[freebee]

typing this while half asleep. My brain is not functioning , fingers are moving, need....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[Phobic9]

"With insomnia, you're never really asleep; you're never really awake."
(quote from Fight Club)

 

[GL]

cbwolf, that's pretty extreme staying up 2-3 days. I've heard that Thomas Edison absolutely hated sleep...thought it was unproductive. So he would take micronaps. He'd just sleep for 6 minutes several times a day.

But I'd think that on the short term, lack of sleep won't necessarily cause noticeable damage. It's on the long term that things get pretty scary. Add up all the lost hours of sleep over an entire year and you get a big number. The younger you are, the more sleep you need. Studies are showing that teenagers probably need about 10-12 hours of sleep.

I'm not an expert but I'd say that lack of sleep would probably affect physical growth, sexual functioning, stress levels, emotional coping skills and a whole slew of other things.

Like somebody already mentioned, sleep is like maintenance for our body. Memories are categorized into important ones and non-important ones...the important ones get archived in our brain somewhere and the non-important ones get trashed. And this is just what happens inside the brain. Inside the rest of the body I'm sure repair work is done all the time while we sleep.

-GL

 

[Namuna]

Movie: Road House
Sam Elliot: "I'll get all the sleep I need when I'm DEAD."

That quote came to mind while reading through this. I can certainly attest to the ILL effects of no sleep, I've been depriving myself of it PLENTY lately (damned new K7T266 Pro motherboard!)

 

[Elledan]

dblpst

 

[Elledan]

<< Ok
What about people that sleep 3-4 hours a night all their lives (like me) and seem to function normally. Does that mean their 'neural pathways' recover faster or that they are being more damaged over time? >>


One 'sleep-cycle' takes about 3-4 hours, so I guess that for your body one cycle is sufficient to continue functioning.

I'm not an expert on this topic, so I might make some mistakes:

My guess is that the times needed to repair those nerve cells and process impressions/emotions they received while they were awake vary significantly from person to person, just like some people heal very quickly from serious injuries. However, a minimum of one 'sleep-cycle' is required to keep functioning properly.

 

[Azraele]

Ok question for those sleep experts. My body is perfecty content with 10 hours a night, 8 being the minimum. My theory on this is that I need those 10 because I dream so much, actively and vividly for most of the night. It's not unusual for me to fall asleep dreaming and wake up in the morning right after a dream has finished. Here's a small example of the type of dream I have. I had this one last night.


I was being shown by someone (not sure who) how the brain pieces together the world. For example, we see colors and shapes or hear sounds. Now, say you're an infant, or have been in an acident resulting in head trauma, and you either don't know or have forgotten how to process that input, colors, shape, speech, etc. Take just one, color to make the explanation simple. Your eyes are seeing color, but the brain doesn't quite yet know how to process the signals the eyes send out. That's what I saw in the dream. Then I *saw* how the barin processes and pieces together that information, but not just color, the whole thing being put together at once, sound, color, shape, etc.

 

[Azraele]

<<sleep is suck when you got lots of work to do >>

Is there any way you can arrange your schedule so that you get at least a good 7, 8 hours a night?

People tend to work 10 times more productively when they have had sufficient sleep.

 

[chigga]

i goto college and i sleep for 12 hours a day and take 3 hour naps.. is that healthy? i cant seem to wake up in the A.M. hours

 

[Azraele]

chigga&quot; Offhand I'd say that much sleep is not healthy and to see a doc about it, but I think it also depends on your schedlule/stress level.

 

[zzzz]

<< What about people that sleep 3-4 hours a night all their lives (like me) and seem to function normally. >>


You might seem to function normally but believe me in the long term, it is going to cost you. You will probably get old faster or get serious problems later on in your life.

 

[AMB]

There is an &quot;interesting&quot; article here...

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=117529&amp;tocid=38759#38759.toc