The Dangers of Sleep Deprivation: Can You Die from Not Sleeping?

[sherlockjones]

someone stays up work a whole week without sleeping? can he die?

what about coffee? is it a good acaloric beverage to give someone a quick fix-me up?

Right now I see, hear, feel, smell and taste. I am thankful for that.

 

[Danger]

Unless there's some chronic reason that you can't sleep at all, you won't die. Sheer will-power can't keep you awake to that point. You will, however, experience something very like being on drugs. I was up for 142 hours once (with 3 hours of naps), and hallucinations were just starting to set in.

 

[Kalimaa23]

Longest I have ever been awake was close to 72 hours. Halucinations usually set in after the first 40.

I don't think it's possible to stay awake for a whole week without special training. Anyway, it's not healty...

 

[neutrino]

I've seen a BBC documentary about this. People were taken through a trek in a jungle without any sleep at all. When the doctors came up to check them, the refused to say anything, even their names! I'll try to get a link to the programme(if available) for a better explanation.

 

[Averagesupernova]

If kept awake for long enough you will die. However, this requires more than just willpower as already stated. IIRC the body temp starts to drop.

 

[moose]

I've read several articles on people dying from staying up too long. Mainly, they were gaming for extremely long periods of time.

After this entire ordeal... You should probably take two days off...

 

[verty]

Coffee is not a good fix-me-up because it doesn't fix you up. At most, it gives a temporary boost but leaves you more tired. After cutting out caffeine, I became far more alert generally than I was before.

I think people can probably stay awake indefinitely but surely only after training and it wouldn't be a very wakeful state. It would probably take some years to master. I say this because sometimes I stay up late sitting at the PC, but because I'm not exerting myself, I then have say 5 hours of sleep and feel okay the next day.