Why can't a person sleep? Consequences for the body of one sleepless night. Undoubtedly, you are corroded by curiosity - how it all ended

Sleep is the most important physiological need human body. Lack of sleep or insufficient amount of it affects health in the same way as a serious illness. But in life, few people managed to avoid the situation when they had to stay awake for more than 18 hours, and for some, the period of insomnia may, for some reason, last longer. If you do not sleep for 3 days, then changes begin in the body.

What is sleep and why is it needed

To understand what it means for the body not to sleep for 3 days in a row, let's briefly consider why a person needs sleep, and what it should be like.

During sleep, all processes in the body slow down: we breathe less often, the heart rate slows down, and muscle tone decreases. The brain during sleep also changes its work: it switches to night mode, and gives commands to all organs and systems of the body for restructuring in the night mode. On cellular level sleep regenerates. The psycho-emotional sphere also rests: it is not for nothing that it is said that anxiety and unrest go away with sleep.

In order for the body to really rest and sleep to be physiological, it is necessary that the quality of this rest meets certain criteria:

sufficient duration;
comfortable bed;
comfortable environment.

The physiological norm of sleep depends on age and individual features, but for the normal functioning of the body you need to sleep at least 7 hours a day.

Quality sleep means horizontal position body to unload the spine and relax the skeletal muscles. The bed should not be too soft or too hard. The comfort of the environment is determined by:

air humidity;
temperature;
room ventilation;
absence external stimuli(light, noise, smells).

Missing one or more conditions normal sleep can cause insomnia.

Causes of insomnia

Insomnia can be caused by:

negative emotions accumulated during the day;
depressive state;
fear;
psychological overstrain;
overexcitation;
information overload;
external stimuli;
physiological problems ( strong pain etc.)

In some situations, a person needs to stay awake for a long time, but it is a mistake to believe that if you do not sleep for 3 days, you can do three times the amount of work. During insomnia, a person's performance drops significantly, and well-being worsens, and this process goes on increasing as the duration of lack of sleep for two or more days in a row.

Processes in the body during prolonged insomnia

If a person is forced to stay awake for three days or more, there are changes in the physiological and mental state. violated normal work all organs, because they are not allowed to rest and recover.

The first and main consequence prolonged absence sleep - a sharp decline working capacity. Feeling grows physical fatigue, a person is not able to do even that physical work which he usually does without difficulty.

Mental abilities decrease: a person cannot solve elementary arithmetic problems, hardly remembers dates, surnames, etc. It is difficult for him to concentrate on anything. When typing, a large number of errors and typos are made.

Three days without sleep cause a speech disorder: already on the second day, a person begins to speak more slowly, and after 48 hours of insomnia, he begins to “talk”, loses the logical thread of the conversation, and finds the right words with difficulty.

Memory lapses can relate to both long-standing events and those that happened an hour ago. There are sharp behavioral changes: a person becomes irritable, causeless tears and even tantrums are possible.

changing appearance, the person seems older than his age. Because he starts rubbing his eyes, he has red, swollen eyelids with bruising or bags under his eyes. Skin covering and the mucous membranes turn pale, the nails may become bluish.

Along with physical weakness, coordination of movements is disturbed, tremor (trembling) of the arms and legs appears, convulsive twitching of the limbs and facial muscles is possible ( nervous tick). If you do not sleep for 3 days, visual acuity decreases, the visual picture “floats”, becomes fuzzy. There may be "flies" before the eyes. Hands and feet begin to go numb, the skin becomes very cold to the touch, profuse sweat may come out.

This condition is accompanied by bouts of chills. Decreased or completely absent appetite, the person feels sick. If he is not allowed to sleep at the onset of such symptoms, there will be sharp deterioration conditions: visual and auditory hallucinations, after which the person falls into coma and may die.

Consequences of prolonged sleep deprivation

Such a physiological load cannot pass without a trace for the body. You should not assume that it will be enough to sleep properly - and everything is in order. To get back on the track of normal functioning, you will need not only long sleep: to relieve the stress received by the body during insomnia, a rehabilitation period is needed.

If you do not sleep for three days, it weakens immune defense body, since T-lymphocytes, which are responsible for the antiviral and antibacterial barrier, are produced during sleep. Therefore, it is highly likely that after three sleepless days a person may develop an infectious disease.

With forced insomnia, people try to cheer themselves up with the help of various drinks(tea, coffee, energy drinks), which are in large numbers drastically worsen performance of cardio-vascular system. Even after a person gets enough sleep, he will experience headaches due to spasms of cerebral vessels, arrhythmia and tachycardia. Possible malfunctions gastrointestinal tract(constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, nausea and vomiting, flatulence).

Recovery of the body after three days without sleep

In order to get out of a difficult physiological "corkscrew", sometimes it may be necessary drug therapy: the doctor may prescribe sedatives, vitamin complexes, heart remedies.

Changing the biochemistry of the human body will require restorative measures. Relieve the condition of a person after insomnia plentiful drink. Restoring strength will help diet with high content protein, food should be easily digestible. After the stress, it will be difficult for the body to digest heavy fatty foods, so the table should correspond to the diet that is prescribed to patients after surgical operations and transferred serious illnesses. These are light first courses, lean meat, eggs, dairy products. Food needs to be boiled (meat and fish can be steamed), stewed with a little oil.

Physical activity should be increased gradually.

If a person is busy with work that requires concentration, coordination of movements, attentiveness, it is necessary to start professional activities no earlier than a week after the shake-up occurred.

Only for such a period can one speak of full recovery functionality of the organism and overcoming negative consequences prolonged insomnia.

Techniques if you need not sleep for 3 days

When a situation arises in life that requires prolonged wakefulness, you can alleviate your condition if you follow simple rules.

The day before, you need to have a good rest and sleep longer than usual.
Replace heavy meals with lighter ones, be sure to stock up on fresh fruit.
Once an hour, do short, simple exercises: move, jump, squat. Tilts to the side and in front of you will provide a rush of blood to the brain and relieve tension from the spine.
Eat little by little, preferably after 3-4 hours. Drink better still water and juices, tea and coffee per day, drink no more than 400 ml, in small cups.
Do not turn off the lights at night, but make sure that the light is not too bright and does not fall directly into the eyes.
You need constant communication with others, you can turn on peppy music.

excluded for this period. professional activity and any activity that requires concentration, visual acuity and concentration (driver, dispatcher, etc.).

On weekends, especially in summer, many people not only do not get enough sleep, but almost do not sleep, leaving for a sleepless two-day entertainment marathon. And let's find out how our body reacts to such bullying and what will happen if we don't sleep for a week.

First day

If a person does not sleep for a day, then no serious consequences for his health, this will not cause, however long period wakefulness will disrupt the circadian cycle, which is determined by the setting biological clock person.

Scientists believe that approximately 20,000 neurons in the hypothalamus are responsible for the biological rhythms of the body. This is the so-called suprachiasmatic nucleus.

Circadian rhythms are synchronized with the 24-hour light cycle of day and night and are associated with brain activity and metabolism, so even a daily delay in sleep will lead to a slight disruption in the body's systems.

If a person does not sleep for a day, then, firstly, he will feel tired, and secondly, he may have problems with memory and attention. This is due to a violation of the functions of the neocortex, which is responsible for memory and learning abilities.

Second-third days

If a person does not go to bed for two or three days, then in addition to fatigue and memory problems, he will add a violation of coordination in movements, they will begin to appear serious problems with concentration of thought and concentration of sight. Due to exhaustion nervous system a nervous tic may appear.

Due to a disruption in the work of the frontal lobe of the brain, a person will begin to lose the ability to think creatively and focus on the task, his speech will become monotonous, clichéd.

In addition to "brain" complications, a person will also begin to "rebel" digestive system. This is due to the fact that a long period of wakefulness activates the protective evolutionary mechanism "fight or flight" in the body.

A person will increase the production of leptin and increase appetite (with an addiction to salty and fatty foods), the body, in response to stressful situation, will start the function of storing fats and producing hormones responsible for insomnia. Oddly enough, it will not be easy for a person to fall asleep during this period, even if he wants to.

Fourth-fifth days

On the fourth or fifth day without sleep, a person may begin to experience hallucinations, he will become extremely irritable. After five days without sleep, the work of the main parts of the brain will slow down in a person, neural activity will be extremely weak.

Serious violations will be observed in the parietal zone, which is responsible for logic and mathematical ability, so solving even the simplest arithmetic problems will be an impossible task for a person.

Due to disturbances in the temporal lobe, which is responsible for speech abilities, a person’s speech will become even more incoherent than on the third day without sleep.

The hallucinations already mentioned will begin to occur due to a malfunction in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

Sixth to seventh days

On the sixth or seventh day without sleep, a person will not be much like himself at the beginning of this sleepless marathon. His behavior will be extremely strange, hallucinations will be both visual and auditory.

The official record holder for insomnia, American student Randy Gardner (did not sleep for 254 hours, 11 days), on the sixth day without sleep, developed syndromes typical of Alzheimer's disease, had severe hallucinations and there was paranoia.

He mistook a road sign for a person and believed that the radio station host wanted to kill him.

Gardner had a strong tremor of the limbs, he could not speak coherently, the decision simple tasks baffled him - he simply forgot what he had just been told and what the task was.

By the seventh day without sleep, the body will experience serious stress of all body systems, brain neurons will be inactive, the heart muscle will be worn out, immunity will almost cease to resist viruses and bacteria due to the passivity of T-lymphocytes, the liver will experience enormous stress.

In general, such experiments with health are extremely dangerous.

Why is it dangerous to work at night and how to protect yourself from it? Councils of the psychotherapist.

Life coach and psychotherapist Natalya Stilson talked about why night work is not at all a salvation and a heavenly vacancy for a person from the owl squad, but a powerful blow to the body.

What is the night shift for us? One night shift can be compared to an 8 hour jet lag. That is, working one night is like flying by plane through 8 time zones.

Imagine how difficult such conditions are for the body. A number of our genes (and quite a few) are responsible for various rhythmic processes. For example, the processes of cell division, sleep-wake, digestion, synthesis, hormone release, and so on. After we switch to night mode (or fly to the place), the work of 97% of these genes deteriorates significantly. This failure of all processes is needed by the body in order to adjust to new way, but such a reboot is extremely difficult. All physiological processes slow down sharply. But after the flight, a person usually returns to the usual mode, and work on the night shift goes on and on. Naturally, this affects health.

Working night shifts increases the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, coronary disease heart disease, and even breast cancer.

Causes of breast cancer

During sleep disturbance with regular night shifts, the level of melatonin, the hormone responsible for the onset of sleep, decreases. This substance also has an antitumor effect (protects against cancer). There are 3 hypotheses explaining the action of melatonin:

A decrease in melatonin increases the concentration of female sex hormones in the blood. There is a constant stimulation of breast cells to divide, which can cause malignant degeneration.
Melatonin itself has cancer-preventing properties. It blocks the biochemical pathways in the body that are used for constant uncontrolled cell division.
The secretion of melatonin is closely related to the secretion of the p53 protein, the main defender of our body against tumors. Less melatonin - less p53, more chances for cancer cell survive and reproduce.

Causes of type 2 diabetes

Women who work night shifts for 10-19 years in a row increase their risk of diabetes by 40%. And those who have been engaged in such work for more than 20 years - by 60%.
Probable cause is a violation of the secretion of insulin and the deterioration of its effect on body tissues. Cells starving from a lack of energy cease to respond adequately to it and take glucose from the blood. This is due to a violation of the release of hormones responsible for appetite. The hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, appears in the blood in large quantities than leptin, the satiety hormone. As a result, at night you want to have a snack, and this is not a physiological time for eating.
Another hypothesis suggests that a decrease in glucose tolerance (cell resistance to insulin) is associated with a violation of the microbial composition of the intestinal contents (dysbiosis) during jet lag. After a jet lag, the intestinal flora is restored in a couple of weeks, but this is not available for people with night shifts.

Of course, working at night also leads to vitamin D deficiency, because late birds spend little time in the sun. And this is another factor in the development of obesity, as well as impaired immunity, depression and dementia.

Go stupid in the night

Perhaps most disturbingly, night shifts exacerbate the phenomena of cognitive decline. That is, they lead to a deterioration in memory and intelligence. How more people works in this mode, the more pronounced the changes. Night workers are 6.5 years ahead of peer day workers in memory and intelligence decline. After leaving work after 10 years, it is still possible to restore lost abilities, so for 5 years. And then, this is if the employee is not affected by other factors that worsen mental health.

Several articles have cited a study showing that aircraft attendants who experience chronic jet lag show a reduction in the frontal lobe. This is not surprising, since a chronically sleep-deprived person begins to lose their neurons. After several sleepless nights, the level of a protein in the brain increases, which protects nerve cells from destruction and helps them recover. But if insomnia becomes chronic, then the chances of recovery are reduced. It is not known how pronounced this process is in humans, but mice in the experiment lost up to 25% of neurons in the locus coeruleus (responsible for the physiological response to stress).

Conclusion - night work definitely harmful to health. If there is no way to refuse it, then it is better to at least leave it before your experience is 10 years old.

Protective measures

What if you still have to work at night? The main idea of protective measures is to maintain, if possible, the alternation of sleep and wakefulness, so as not to expose the body to unnecessary stress. After sleepless night sleep should be followed by a prescribed 6-8 hours.

In addition, it is useful:

Don't work hard after the night shift. The clock has struck - home.
Take a nap during your shift if possible. This reduces the overall stress of forced wakefulness.
If you can’t take a nap, then be sure to take breaks during which you try to move more.
Avoid constant chewing of any nuts, chips, sweets and the like. Snacking will further de-align the system associated with satiety and hunger.
Do not drink alcohol.
As for coffee-containing drinks, experts differ. Some believe that drinking them is necessary to maintain the level of wakefulness, others argue that after them you only want to sleep more. But this is different for everyone. There are those for whom coffee is no worse than sleeping pills.
After you left workplace after the shift, it is advisable to wear dark glasses so as not to wake yourself sunlight. Under its influence, the amount of melatonin decreases and drowsiness decreases. At home, go to bed with curtained windows. Don't drink caffeinated drinks before bed. Avoid alcohol, even if it makes you fall asleep.

And now a young man who, as he claims, did not sleep for 5 nights, shares his feelings:

Forced or voluntary lack of sleep is called insomnia. This process is enough strong influence on the human body, because during sleep our body and brain restore energy for next day. Some symptoms appear only after a while, but we feel something the next day. Of course, we all understand that insomnia is harmful, however, what will happen if you do not sleep for a long time, perhaps only those who have tested it for themselves know.

Consequences of prolonged sleep deprivation

If a person not only does not get enough sleep, but does not sleep at all, the consequences will soon make themselves felt, and not only he himself, but also the people around him will notice them. And, despite the reasons that caused insomnia, what happens if you don’t sleep for a long time proceeds in people in about the same way:

If a person does not sleep for a day, this will not cause any visible health problems. However, even due to minor violation biological rhythms body, fatigue, irritability, and, possibly, appear.

After two or three days of insomnia, impaired coordination and vision will be added to the existing problems. It will be much more difficult to focus on a task, speech and thinking will become monotonous and perhaps a little slow. An immoderate appetite also appears, this is due to the fact that the body needs more energy and it accumulates it through food. Therefore, for those who want to lose weight, in addition, it is necessary. However, despite all that will happen if you do not sleep for a long time, it will be very difficult to overcome insomnia during this period.

On the fourth or fifth day, disturbances in the work of almost all parts of the brain begin. Now even the simplest arithmetic example will become an almost impossible task for a person. Speech becomes not only slow, but also inarticulate. Hallucinations are added to all this, which is perhaps the most unpleasant and dangerous symptom.

What will happen if you don’t sleep even longer has almost identical signs, like last stage Alzheimer's disease. In addition to exhaustion of the whole organism and a huge load on the heart, brain activity a person slows down so much that he no longer resembles who he was before the onset of insomnia. To hallucinations and tremors of all limbs, a complete shutdown of long-term memory and paranoia are added.

After that, only two options remain: either the long-awaited one, or the load on the body becomes so strong that it leads to death.

Records of lack of sleep

People whose records for insomnia are remembered by the whole world know firsthand what will happen if you do not sleep for a long time. The first record holder was seventeen-year-old Randy Gardner, who in the winter of 1963 was able to stay awake for eleven days. The next famous sleep denier was 42-year-old Tony Wright, who exaggerated the previous record by nine hours.

Such experiments with one's health are very dangerous, because the indicated terms are rather arbitrary. Each person has their own individual need during sleep, and the onset of symptoms can be greatly accelerated.

Sometimes people find it difficult to answer simple everyday questions correctly. So that you don't fall into awkward situation and did not harm ourselves, we explain the nature of the phenomena that surround us every day. This time we'll talk about what happens if you don't sleep.

Nightly preparations for exams, parties, important work tasks, the birth of a child - most of us sooner or later face forced insomnia. But if temporary lack of sleep does not cause health great harm long-term sleep deprivation threatens with serious problems.

Sleep is the foundation good health along with proper nutrition and regular exercise, says board-certified clinical somnologist Terry Krahl. - These three factors are so interconnected that each should be a priority. It may seem that a couple of sleepless nights is a feat worthy of praise. But look at what your body will have to face.

24 hours without sleep

US Army veteran Scott Kelly knows firsthand about sleep deprivation. In the service, he had to stay awake for more than 24 hours on many occasions.

There were several cases in Afghanistan and Iraq when after 15-20 hours of work there was a rocket attack, and we had to take off from the spot,” he recalls.

Military training and a regular "refueling" of adrenaline allowed Kelly to function tolerably, but under normal conditions, a day without sleep causes cognitive impairment comparable to alcohol intoxication. A 2010 study published in the journal Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health found that a person's memory, motor coordination, and clarity of thought deteriorate.

Decision making becomes more difficult, says Kralj. - You become inattentive, more emotional, begin to hear worse and are exposed to increased risk accidents.

Shot from the movie "Fight Club" (1999)

36 hours without sleep

In this phase, health begins to be at risk. After 36 hours of being awake, a blood test shows high levels markers of inflammation, which can lead to high blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythms. In addition, under the influence of hormones, a person ceases to control his emotions.

The head begins to buzz, weakness appears, and motivation completely beats off. In some cases, I acted on autopilot, and some of the events immediately fell out of my memory, ”recalls Kelly.

48 hours without sleep

After two days without sleep, the body begins to compensate for the lack of energy through microsleep - periods of short sleep lasting from one to thirty seconds. As a rule, this condition is accompanied by increasing disorientation.

Microsleep can happen at any time, no matter what you're doing, says Kralj. - This condition is especially dangerous for drivers, when a few lost seconds can lead to tragedy.

After 48 hours of being awake, the mind begins to gradually slip away. You may find yourself staring into the distance for a few seconds, unable to focus on any point, he recalls.

72 hours without sleep

Three days without sleep leads to violations of higher mental processes: imagination, perception, memory, thinking and speech.

Even a simple conversation becomes a problem, says Kelly. - The hallucinations begin. Once I was on guard and repeatedly saw someone sneaking into the camp with a gun at the ready. Running up to the “enemy”, I realized that I was actually looking at tree branches or a shadow.

Frame from the film "The Machinist" (2004)

How many people can live without sleep?

One of the most famous experiments to study this issue was carried out back in 1989. Scientists have found that rats completely deprived of sleep die within 11 to 32 days. It has not yet been established what exactly caused the death of animals. The methods used to keep them awake could also cause death: to keep the rodents from falling asleep, they were constantly given electric shocks.

The question of how long a person can go without sleep remains unanswered. Outside the labs, people were dying from a rare genetic disease- fatal familial insomnia. The disease progresses rapidly, accompanied by hallucinations, weight loss and the development of dementia. The most famous patient with this diagnosis is Michael Korke. He died after 6 months of complete sleep deprivation, but as in clinical trials on animals, it is difficult to determine whether there was insomnia main reason of death.

In the 1960s, a student high school Randy Gardner set out to break the record for the longest stay awake. During the experiment, he developed visual, speech, and memory impairments. By the end of the experiment, the boy began to hallucinate. All these symptoms developed within 11 days.

Oddly enough, neither the causes of sleep nor its evolutionary origins are practically unknown to science. After all, from the point of view of nature, sleep can hardly be called something expedient. If a person or animal is sleeping? his consciousness is switched off for several hours. Needless to say, in this state, the chance of being eaten by predators will increase significantly.

And yet, if not the reasons, then some patterns in the expediency of sleep, scientists managed to find. It turned out, for example, that adults who sleep from 6 to 8 hours are characterized by greater longevity. But excess sleep is fraught with a number of diseases, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But also chronic sleep deprivation also linked to cardiovascular disease, but also depression, obesity, and even brain damage.

What happens if you don't sleep at all? After the first sleepless night, the mesalimbic system is activated in the human brain, releasing dopamine into the blood. From this, a person becomes more energetic, more positive and more active in terms of sex. Fine? Further it will be worse. First, in the brain, one by one, the structures responsible for making decisions and evaluating their consequences are turned off. Outcome? decreased self-control. Fatigue takes its toll, and the reaction rate slows down more and more, and with it the functions of perception of the surrounding world are weakened.

Scientists have found that the assessment of a person's appearance by other people directly depends on whether the person slept well. A sleepy person is perceived as unhealthy and unattractive

After two sleepless nights in the human body, glucose metabolism and work are disturbed. immune system. After three sleepless nights, hallucinations may appear.

The longest sleep deprivation in a scientific experiment lasted 264 hours or 11 days. For obvious reasons, they did not continue the experiment. But what have scientists managed to find out? To their surprise, after 11 days without sleep, the person became only more distracted and irritable, with difficulty perceiving the world. But it did not have any consequences for the body. IN medically all organs functioned normally, there was no brain damage, no mental disorders. It is worth remembering, however, that the experiment ended there. Therefore, there is no guarantee that if it continued, irreparable harm would not be done to human health.

After all, experiments on rats showed that after two weeks of sleep deprivation, poor animals died. However, scientists do not have confidence that the cause of death was the lack of sleep, and not the stress of constant awakening. Perhaps the study of fatal familial insomnia will shed light on this problem? a rare genetic brain disease in which a person suffers from an increasingly severe sleep disorder. In fact, he suffers from insomnia, which leads first to hallucinations, then? to mental disorder, and then to death. Despite the fact that the number of patients with this type of insomnia does not exceed a hundred people? average term life after the onset of the disease is no more than 18 months. As insomnia progresses, one by one they stop working internal organs. In other words, although lack of sleep does not equate to rapid death, prolonged sleep deprivation will affect the body negatively and may even lead to death.