SLEEP DEPRIVATION

If you've ever been up all night studying for a test or caring for a fussy infant, you'll understand how bad the next day can be. Try doing it for 18 days, 21 hours, and 40 minutes straight. That is the current world record for the longest period of time without sleep. And no one should attempt to break that record. For starters, the Guinness Book of World Records discontinued it as a category in 1997, so you wouldn't even get a cool title for all of your awful efforts. For another, you could die. But you might be astonished to learn how sleep deprivation can kill you. Research indicates that it is not a neurological issue... but an entirely different organ. Sleep is amazing. Who doesn't enjoy an extra snooze? However, sleep is not only enjoyable; it is also healthy to our bodies. While we sleep, our brain does a variety of things. Some we are aware of, such as dreaming. But there is a lot going on behind the scenes. Sleep creates new brain connections, allowing us to learn and keep our important memories. It can also assist our brains in healing after an accident! Plus, our brains have a third shift cleanup team called the glymphatic system, which removes the molecular trash produced by our central nervous system during the day.

However, the benefits extend beyond our minds. Sleep also helps to strengthen our immune system, regulate hormones, develop muscle, and maintain healthy skin. They don't call it beauty sleep for nothing, people. If you're like me, you've experienced some brain fog, an inability to concentrate, or a proclivity to become sidetracked after a bad night's sleep. Losing even a few hours of sleep, let alone 18 in a row, can negatively impact our cognitive ability. In fact, studies have shown that a single night without sleep can impair us to the point where we appear inebriated. Moreover, many of us probably suffer sleep deprivation in smaller, more frequent amounts. You may not pull all-nighters on a regular basis, but you may have several evenings where you just get a few hours of sleep. And, while it's easy to dismiss this as the regular "rise and grind" of modern life, long-term, chronic sleep deprivation can have major health consequences that extend far beyond our brains. Poor sleep has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, mental health disorders such as depression, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Chronic sleep deprivation can kill you.

What is the exact cause? Well, I certainly do not want to volunteer for any kind of study that could reveal the truth. And I'd bet that most individuals feel the same way. So, of course, scientists went to animal models. The first formal investigations to demonstrate the deadly effects of sleep deprivation were conducted in the 1890s. Their procedures were problematic in light of current animal research ethics standards.

And by dubious, I mean three studies that kept puppies from falling asleep! And one of the cutest things you'll ever see is a sleeping puppy! Scientists, that's not cool! These puppies had very serious brain defects before they began to die within a few days. To make matters worse, these experiments were of little scientific use because it was hard to determine whether the puppies' deaths were due to sleep deprivation or the stress they were under to stay awake.

However, these investigations did support two theories: the first is that sleep deprivation might cause death, and the second is that sleep deprivation mostly harms the brain. However, it turns out that just one of these has endured. It simply took nearly a century for other researchers to emerge and dissect sleep deprivation and stress. Rats were used by University of Chicago researchers in 1989. Rats were paired together for the team's experiments. One rat was the control, while the other would not be let to sleep. Over a container of water, the two rats were positioned together on a turntable. The table would rotate if the sleep-deprived rat fell asleep, forcing the rats to move or be scooted.

Whatever happened, it was a certain way to wake up. As long as its mate was awake, the control rat was free to sleep whenever it pleased. This indicated that although both rats went through the same amount of stressful situations, the control rat was able to sleep far more. Actually, it slept roughly 70% of the time it usually does. Although it is significantly more than the other rat's sleep deprivation—roughly 9% of its typical sleep—I would still classify it as sleep deprivation. The main advantage of this study was that it allowed the researchers to distinguish between the causes of the stress that led to the lack of sleep and the consequences of the lack of sleep.

And, yes, several of their rats did die from sleep deprivation. However, the researchers did not see any significant physiological abnormalities between the rats that could explain why. They didn't even test their brains because none of their previous research had proven that this sleep deprivation procedure had any effect on the brain. Thank you to Skillshare for supporting this SciShow video! Skillshare is the largest online learning community for creatives, offering thousands of programs taught by industry leaders in crafts, baking, business, cinema, and productivity.

In one case, Harvard Medical School researchers were able to employ gene editing to keep flies awake forever. The flies in question have neuronal alterations that caused them to respond differently depending on temperature. If the temperature was at least 29 degrees Celsius, some neurons that suppress sleep would remain active, making the flies unable to fall asleep. Now, before someone says, "I couldn't sleep at that temperature either!" it's important mentioning that the temperature wasn't a stressor. It's a little warm for flies, but not unusually so. Of course, they also grew control flies at the same temperature to demonstrate that the flies were killed by sleep deprivation rather than the cause of the sleep deprivation.

So, what happened to the sleepless flies? As you can expect, they did not fare well. A typical fly can survive at 29 degrees for roughly 40 days. Without the ability to sleep, these genetically modified men began to die around 10 days, with none surviving beyond 20 days. However, if the researchers allowed the temperature to drop below 29 degrees and allowed the flies to sleep on day 10, they would be able to recover completely. That rehabilitation took another 15 days, which represents a considerable percentage of a 40-day lifespan. But that was completely necessary.

If the sleep-deprived flies were just given a few days of sleep and then deprived of sleep again, they would swiftly die. So something was severely destroyed, necessitating a lengthy recovery period. That leads us back to the day's question: if it isn't the brain, whatever organ is responsible for sleep-deprived death? It turns out that, at least in fruit flies, it is the gut. More specifically, it refers to the accumulation of substance in the gut known as reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS, as the name implies, are extremely reactive oxygen molecules.In other words, they destroy other molecules, and you don't want them to get too far. However, as frightening as it may sound, having them inside of you is very normal. Our bodies constantly produce ROS as our cells and the components inside them perform the tasks required to keep us alive. Our cells usually have a way of removing the metaphorical trash, so these chemicals can't do too much damage.

Overproduction of ROS can harm cells by damaging DNA, proteins, and lipids, among other critical components. When this research team was analyzing the tissues of their sleep-deprived fruit flies for biological side effects, they discovered a massive buildup of ROS in the stomach. Only the intestines, not the muscles or the brain. They needed to determine whether ROS was the true cause of mortality because, at this stage, the finding was only correlational. The group had to figure out how to lower ROS levels without sacrificing sleep. They therefore resorted to antioxidants, a class of substances well-known for their capacity to subdue them. Since some research has linked antioxidants to a number of advantages that marketing teams might exaggerate, such as anti-aging and anti-cancer, you've undoubtedly heard of them as a nutrition term.

Notwithstanding the hype, antioxidants actually attach to and neutralize ROS to shield cells from the harmful effects that could otherwise cause issues in the future. A diet rich in specific antioxidants was also discovered to extend the life of a fruit fly that had been deprived of sleep, even if it never slept again! Some of these antioxidants neutralized the ROS by binding to them directly, while others encouraged the flies to make additional antioxidants of their own.

The flies may live to be 40 days old, if not a little bit longer, because a set of antioxidants helped to lower the levels of ROS. However, more significantly, research showed that sleep deprivation was not just associated with but also the cause of ROS generation. However, the precise process by which sleep deprivation leads to excessive gut ROS and ultimately to mortality is yet unknown. Up until recently, no study had tied sleep deprivation to death. However, prior research had linked it to elevated ROS levels.

This implies that many concerns remain, such as why ROS generation is connected to sleep in the first place, how can these extra ROS actually cause mortality, and what causes all of these ROS? The most important question you may be asking yourself right now, though, is: Does this imply that I won't ever need to sleep again as long as I consume a lot of "superfoods" that are high in antioxidants? Most likely not, mmmm. I suppose you're not a fruit fly after all.

Additionally, you most likely want to live past the following forty days. However, adding some berries to your breakfast the morning after a late night out can't go wrong. Just be sure to schedule some time to resume a regular sleep schedule. Because you can actually live your entire life awake. Simply put, your remaining years will be far shorter than you would desire.