WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU DIDN’T SLEEP?

Do Nigeria have enough sleep?

One in every five people across the world is sleep deprived, that represents 20 percent of people that are sleep deprived globally. In Nigeria, it’s estimated that 30 percent of adults and 66 percent of adolescents are regularly sleep-deprived.

This isn’t just a minor inconvenience: staying awake can cause serious bodily harm. Claudia Aguirre shows what happens to your body and brain when you skip sleep.

Sleep according to Wikipedia deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function.

However, in a subset of cases sleep deprivation can, paradoxically, lead to increased energy and alertness and enhanced mood; it has even been used as a treatment for depression. Few studies have compared the effects of acute total sleep deprivation and chronic partial sleep restriction. Complete absence of sleep over long periods has not been seen in humans (unless they suffer from fatal familial insomnia); it appears that brief micro-sleeps cannot be avoided.

Microsleeps occur when a person has a significant sleep deprivation. Microsleeps usually last for a few seconds and happen most frequently when a person is trying to stay awake when they are feeling sleepy. The person usually falls into microsleep while doing a monotonous task like driving, reading a book, or staring at a computer. Microsleeps are similar to blackouts and a person experiencing them is not consciously aware that they are occurring.

An even lighter type of sleep has been seen in rats that have been kept awake for long periods of time. In a process known as local sleep, specific localized brain regions went into periods of short (~80 ms) but frequent (~40/min) NREM-like states. Despite the on and off periods where neurons shut off, the rats appeared to be awake, although they performed poorly at tests. Studies have shown that long-term total sleep deprivation has caused death in lab animals.