What are some effects of not sleeping at all?

Question

If a person did not sleep for say, about a week, what are some of the effects they would experience?

Besides drowsiness, obviously. Hallucinating? fainting? I'm just curious. How would the body break down during the time ?(or would it, for that matter?)

Answer 1

Yes, hallucinating, and possibly fainting, delusions, crabbiness. Your nervous system would go into stress and your physical body would start to weaken. Your eyesight gets grainy, fuzzy or blurry; dry or chalky mouth, headache or sensitivity, back ache, kidney area, especially. Some people get really emotional, some people get paranoid with their delusions.

Answer 2

There have been human studies that disallowed sleep for up to seven days. Most of the participants in the study began to hallucinate after day four, could not remember simple tasks, could not concentrate and became physically impared, either by becoming hyperactive, or "numb".
In lab studies, rats kept asleep past 14 days die 90% of the time.
Strangely, a person who is disallowed sleep will have a REM rebound, where they will spend the next few nights in REM sleep most of time. Scientists think this is a way to "catch up" on REM sleep, but it does not extend to all sleep phases, only REM.

There is also one sleep study done with only one participant, who was not impared at all, even after seven days. However, this was not a scientific study as it did not involve a control group and only had one participant, so its results are questionable.

Answer 3

I have seen a video that say that the one who doesn't sleep for 24 feels that he isn't concentrating, if he sleeps for 4 hours then he get up and still waking up for another 24 he will feel somethings aren't happening like you think that a man has pass through you but that isn't true and a lot of things like that . but after two or three days of this you will be fine and you will find that you get with the system ( no problem with not sleeping ) after a month of this routine the brain cells start to be destroyed and you will have enormous problem so don't try to do that .

Answer 4

Lack of concentration, lower intelligent. a show did test three people where put to the test for a lunch time rest and all scored higher are lunch time rest

The Lost boy and girls from Sudan walked from Ethiopia back to Sudan, they where rescued by water trucks then taken to Kenya refugee camp. They all clasped on the ground
and slept.

Answer 5

When I was in college, I was up for 60 hours. It was a huge mistake. First, I studied for finals, then went out with friends, and kept studying cramming for those all important finals. Back in those days, you just popped NoDoz, which were bought right in the grocery checkout. I didn't use anything stronger and just kept popping them. Big mistake. By the end of 60 hours after I had taken my finals, I tried to go to sleep and couldn't. I was still wide awake. I tried everything I could think of to make me sleepy...hot chocolate, warm bath, boring TV. Finally watching an old James Bond movie put me to sleep. It is very scary when you can't go to sleep. It is one of those self-fulfilling prophecies. You want to sleep but can't and you can't sleep but want to sleep. Do yourself a huge favor and stay in your regular sleep patterns.

Answer 6

Hallucination, poor judgement, mood impairment, and finally "microsleep" episodes. Microsleep is when your brain does fall asleep for seconds at a time even if you appear to be sitting up or awake. If you're artificially kept awake for longer than 10 days you can die.

Answer 7

iritability .dry mouth .dizzyness ,ringing in the ears
lot depends on how long
a week is not yet all that much most people can get away with a week ,they just think they cant ,but then you can sleep for two days and be OK again

Answer 8

While it depends upon individual constitutional systems but long periods of lack of sleep can result in system distortion, odd reflexes & often hallucination.

Answer 9

We haven't determined the reason why we sleep, but sleep does maintain an opening in the brain needed to for people to memorize and think.

Answer 10

Psychosis.