Types

What happens if I do not get enough sleep?

Complete Sleep Deprivation

Normally, you are up about sixteen or seventeen hours between sleep sessions. Complete sleep deprivation is what happens as the hours go beyond this point. The immediate result is you feel tired, and you feel exhausted. By 2 or 3 A.M., many people have a hard time keeping their eyes open. Simple tasks that you would have no trouble doing suddenly start to become difficult. In fact, in the past decade, a number of studies on hand-eye coordination and reaction time have shown that such sleep deprivation has a similar effect on human performance to being intoxicated.

What happens when complete sleep deprivation is extended for long periods of time? Not surprisingly, things go downhill. Studies have found that when people go two or three days without sleep they have difficulty completing tasks demanding a high attention level and often experience mood swings, depression, and increased feelings of tension.

Performance is also highly influenced by fluctuations in circadian rhythms. Sleep deprived people may still function fairly well during the morning and evening. But during the peaks of sleepiness in the afternoon and overnight hours, people often cannot stay awake and may fall asleep while standing; sitting or even engaging in activities such as talking on the telephone, working on the computer or eating. A small percentage experience paranoia and hallucinations.

Total sleep deprivation can be dangerous and even fatal. Studies done in the nineteenth century found that puppies deprived of sleep died after seven to ten days, and some research found that rats die after two weeks without sleep.

Partial Sleep Deprivation

Partial sleep deprivation is the type that occurs when you get some sleep, but not 100 percent of what you need. What we commonly think of as building up a sleep debt. An example would be when a person who needs seven and a half hours of sleep a night in which he or she only gets four to six hours.

Most people function at or near their normal level. They may not feel great, but they can usually get through the day without others noticing that anything is amiss.

Problems are more likely to become apparent after two or more nights of short sleep. The most obvious signs are increased irritability and sleepiness. Work performance begins to suffer, particularly on complicated tasks, and people are more likely to complain of headaches, stomach problems, and sore joints. In addition, people are at substantially higher risk of falling asleep on the job and while driving home.

Long term partial sleep deprivation is what occurs when someone obtains less than the optimal amount of sleep for months or years on end. Common for insomniacs and people with sleep disorders, as well as healthy people who cannot resist taking advantage of the round-the-clock commerce, communication, and entertainment opportunities our 24/7 society now offers.

Several studies have associated long term sleep deficits with significant health problems and shorter life spans. A 1979 study of almost a million people over age thirty found that men who reported usually sleeping less than four hours a day were nearly three times as likely to die within six years as men who said they averaged seven or eight hours of sleep.

Types of Sleep Deprivation