What are the long term effects on the body and mind from lack of sleep.?

Question

The reason why I ask is because I work grave yard shift.. And it is not to get some form of high... you have to be kidding me.. stick to your day job buddy and do not give advice.. lol.. =)

Answer 1

long term effects will start with the obvious.
Fatigue and bags under the eyes, followed by darkenning and hollowing under the eyes as well.
Weight loss follows along with memory loss, mostly short term memory.
Full memory functions deteriorate, as well as speech and motor skills.
At some point you will not be able to string together a proper sentence, as well you will hallucinate, lose control of basic body functions.
Your immune system will eventually collapse making you prone to illness.
Long term you will damage your brain, and cause distress to internal organs, at some point the damage is irreversable.
And yes you can die from lack of sleep as a result of your brain and body completely shutting down.

Answer 2

You get shaky, your thoughts become disordered, you can get cranky, slightly insane, paranoid. There is some illness I'm not sure if it was just in rats but in humans also where you couldn't sleep, lost weight, ate less and less, body broke down and eventually died. Some of lost sleep is slightly compensated for however by microsleep that is so short you don't realise you have fallen into it and woken up.
Eventually though if you go to sleep you won't sleep the same amount of time to catch up, well not all at once anyway. I think that eventually if you didn't sleep at all you would die though. It would be too much of a strain on the body. However it can be a temporary cure for depression. I'm totally not adverse to short terrm lack of sleep at times for the high that one can get for a time, the low that follows is an irrelevant side effect.

Answer 3

I think if you have repetative periods of going without sleep for long periods of time, the long term affects will be noticeable in your face. I believe you will age faster because sleep regenerates and restores you. A person's face normally shows things long before the rest of the body does. Other than the physical, I'm not sure it has any other affect...unless the body itself ages quicker too.

Answer 4

Sleep deprivation is awful. You can't think or even talk correctly. You can get sick to your stomach, feel very shaky and restless. If this is a chronic problem, you need to see a doctor or stop what you are doing that is causing this. It can affect even your heart rate. Please be smart about this if this is a real problem or if you are thinking of staying awake just to see what will happen. It is not fun nor will it give you a high.

Answer 5

Psychosis, high blood pressure, headache, inability to focus, impaired judgment, irritability, puffy eyes, dark circles around eyes, trembling shakiness, all the deceases and illness that can from a weakened immune system.

Answer 6

your concentration falls drastically the first 48 hours depending on your health. you then start loosing touch with reality. you can't seem to differentiate between the real and the dream world then comes the hallucinations. after 48 hours YOU DIE. thats why it's used as a torture device even by policemen.

Answer 7

initially you just get tired and irritable
longer term you start hallucinating and get paranoid
still longer term you can end up with permanent mental damage

Answer 8

watch the movie the Machinist. has Christian Bale in it the dude from Batman. That will show you

Answer 9

you start to become delerious...see things, hear things that aren't there....judgement becomes impaired, after an extended period of time, the body starts to become weakend, and its ability to repeair itself is diminished

Answer 10

you get more annoyed with people over little things, the more sleep-deprived you are