How long can a person stay awake and what happens to the body then

People spend almost a third of their lives sleeping.

People can sometimes go without sleep for 24 hours straight. But such a violation of the normal rhythm leads to the fact that a person stops distinguishing a dream from reality. That is, the brain requires sleep, and therefore a person is on the fine line between sleep and wakefulness.

About the results of a new study writes Live Science.

People who have not slept for a whole day can develop hallucinations and become very inattentive, because brain activity decreases. Scientists say that such people have slurred speech, the brain stops making adequate decisions, memory deteriorates, irritability appears, hearing and vision are impaired.

According to Elon Aviden of the University of California, Los Angeles, it is almost impossible to go several weeks without sleep. Even after 24 hours of being awake, the brain will inevitably make the body fall asleep.

As shown by studies of the consequences of very long sleep deprivation, in 36 hours a person who has spent so much time without sleep can develop a hormonal imbalance and slow down the metabolism. As for the consequences of lack of sleep for 72 hours, that is, three days, in this case, in addition to all of the above, a person will feel severe anxiety, terrible depression, constant hallucinations will appear, and the human body will not be able to perform its functions normally.

In 1964, an American schoolboy spent 264 hours – 11 days without sleep. This is the most famous experiment on wakefulness. The results report that at the end of the last day, the boy became paranoid and began to see hallucinations.

Previously, researchers named several simple two-minute methods for sleep that will help tame insomnia.

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