Sleep Deprivation

Now I'm suffering from sleep deprivation, didn't sleep at all last night.
 
The body of 14-year-old Crystal Champagne was found underneath a bridge in Louisiana in 1996, an electrical cord wrapped around her neck and her clothes in disarray. It didn’t take long to find the man who did it: within a couple of days, her cousin Damon Thibodeaux confessed to police on tape that he had raped and murdered her.

In fact, Thibodeaux had nothing to do with the crime, as DNA evidence would later confirm. But he paid a heavy price for his false statement, spending 15 years in solitary confinement on death row before being released.

Although hard to fathom, false confessions happen surprisingly often; they are thought to play a role in up to a quarter of wrongful convictions in the US, according to the campaign group the Innocence Project. In many cases, as in Thibodeaux’s, the suspect was profoundly sleep deprived during their police interviews.

Now a study has shed more light on how easily severe exhaustion can lead to this type of false confession. Legal experts are predicting it will be cited in future court cases. “It’s a milestone,” says Lawrence Sherman, head of the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...paign=hoot&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2016-GLOBAL-twitter
 
Timble2 said:
The Myth of Eight Hours Sleep

I've read about this before (it's mentioned earlier in this thread which I've revived after 11 years, some things sleeping lie) it's interesting that the eight hours solid, isn't actually our natural sleep pattern, but one imposed by efficient artificial lighting and the coming of the industrial revolution....oh and coffee.

BBC website
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I read this article a while ago and was chuffed to come across an example of it in The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. It was written in 1861 and set in the 15th century. Just thought I'd mention it!
 
min_bannister said:
I read this article a while ago and was chuffed to come across an example of it in The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade. It was written in 1861 and set in the 15th century. Just thought I'd mention it!
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I'd read that before and was struck by it. It does seem to work OK if you potter about for an hour at 3am or so, if you've woken naturally, especially if one wakes when one should, that is, towards the end of a complete sleep cycle.
 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...sh-engineers-had-undiagnosed-sleep-disorders/

WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - The engineers in two New York City area commuter train crashes suffered from undiagnosed sleep disorders, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.

The board plans to hold a Feb. 6 meeting on the September 2016 crash in Hoboken, New Jersey, that killed one person and injured more than 100 others, and the January accident in Brooklyn that left more than 100 people with non-life-threatening injuries.

Both engineers had no memory of the crashes and were severely overweight. The Centers for Disease Control says being overweight puts individuals at a higher risk of sleep apnea.
 
Coal said:
The reverse is true also. Once one has sleep apnea it's harder to lose weight.
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Increases chances of diabetes, high blood pressure, the list goes on and on. Sleep deprivation and interrupted sleep are one of the biggest killers we face but because it's just "sleep" it's not taken seriously.
 
This stuff is pricey, but like it says on the bottle it really does work. I've only ever had it bought as a gift and it did away with the need for ear plugs (the cat scratching is enough to wake me, I'm a very light sleeper). The ear plugs were causing weird tinnitus effects anyway, so only worked up to a point.

Screen Shot 2017-09-23 at 07.29.02jpeg.jpg
http://www.thisworks.com/sleep/slee...-sleep-pillow-spray.html#sthash.6dskz23I.dpbs
 
David Plankton said:
This stuff is pricey, but like it says on the bottle it really does work. I've only ever had it bought as a gift and it did away with the need for ear plugs (the cat scratching is enough to wake me, I'm a very light sleeper). The ear plugs were causing weird tinnitus effects anyway, so only worked up to a point.

View attachment 6283
http://www.thisworks.com/sleep/slee...-sleep-pillow-spray.html#sthash.6dskz23I.dpbs
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I could've done with some of that last night. I've been nursing some sort of virus - not really much worse that a crappy cold, to be honest, I won't play the 'flu card here - for a few days, but last night I thought I was on the mend. Gratefully crashing into bed at the end of the day, all I wanted to do was sleep through and feel better this morning. No such luck. If I got 1 hour of proper sleep, that's about all it was. Worse than that, my attempts at dropping off were confounded by my brain sprouting all sorts of gibberish. Hard to explain, but it was as if I had to perform a certain task in a specific way, and then I'd be allowed to nod off.

Now I've typed that, I realise that I've related this sort of thing before. Does anyone else get it? It seems to accompany a high fever, and despite my rational mind telling myself that all I want to do is sleep, pure and simple, other parts of my brain are frantically concocting scenarios which serve to prevent rest. As I say, it's hard to explain, but I think you'd know this kind of sleeplessness if you'd experience it. I hope I'm not alone.

Anyway, this morning, it was almost a relief to sit up in bed, knowing that the night was over, even if I felt dog-tired and totally rundown at the end of it. Several hours (plus hot drinks and many pills) later, I almost feel ready to face the world, even though my cold (or whatever it is) is no better than yesterday. If I can get some sleep this morning, though, I think I'll be OK.
 
For three years I worked as a factory maintenance mechanic. There were workers there all night and it was common for me to get a phone call at some ungodly hours urgently requesting my presence to sort out some calamity.
This could happen two or three times a night. So the sleep pattern was very broken up.

I never really recovered from this and now am plagued by sleep problems.

I generally go to sleep about 4 am and have to awake at 8 am. Then I can sort of doze for another couple of hour.

Not recommended.

INT21
 
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I never get a full night's sleep these days. Need to get up and pee a lot.
Getting old ain't great.
 
Thanks for the advice! Pumpkin seeds...never heard of them used as a cure...wouldn't hurt to try it though.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Thanks for the advice! Pumpkin seeds...never heard of them used as a cure...wouldn't hurt to try it though.
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Pharmacies and Health Stores have rather expensive pumpkin seed based remedies for overactive waterworks. A good sprinkling of pumpkin seeds works just as well. Widely available.
 
Sleep seems to be the brain needing to sort and categorize all the sensory impressions it got during the day. I wonder if living in the information age will cause us to sleep more.
 
On BBC R4 now: a timely programme about lack of sleep and its problems and solutions -
Hard work and sweet slumber

Francine Stock talks to the sleep scientist Matthew Walker whose latest book is a clarion call to get more sleep, as the latest research confirms that sleeping less than 6 or 7 hours has a devastating impact onphysical and mental health.

Armed with proof that shift work is detrimental for workers, political strategist Matthew Taylor considers what responsibility companies have to their staff in making sure they get enough sleep and whether since industrialisation modern working practises militate against this.

Concerns about lack of sleep and remedies for improving it are nothing new: the historian Sasha Handley looks back to early modern sleep patterns and advice, and wonders why so many of our forebears slept in two distinct phases with an hour in the early hours set aside for sex, housework or reading.

The latest exhibition at the National Gallery, Reflections, co-curated by Susan Foister, shows how the medieval painter van Eyck had a huge influence on the Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose work stood in opposition to creeping industrialisation and harked back to a by-gone era of knights and sweet slumber.
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Mods - I think it's OK to quote all the blurb as it's not an article but if not, truncate at your own pleasure.
 
Here's a review / reminiscence by a person who went 11 full days without sleep for a science project. At one time he was cited as having performed the longest-known stretch of deliberate sleeplessness. I don't know whether this record is still standing / recognized.

The Haunting Effects Of Going Days Without Sleep
Decades ago, Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 days. He broke a record in the process, but the teenage stunt has come back to haunt him. At 71, he offers wisdom about staying up past your bedtime. ...
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RADIO INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/27/5737...out-sleep?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=science
 
The Queen has trouble sleeping, it seems, according to the Times, and sometime this last year she took up walking the ground of the Palace at night. She bumped into a guardsman who said 'Blimey, your majesty, I nearly shot you!'

Now THAT would've be a story!
 
Here's the link to the Wikipedia entry on Randy Gardner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_(record_holder)

It notes there are multiple claims of later folks having broken Gardner's record, but apparently none of these subsequent events were as well-monitored and documented as his.
 
My sleep patterns vary depending upon what's going on in my life but the duration seems to be the same. I sleep very lightly and wake up instantly if any of the kids turn the door handle in their rooms. Strangely though, I dream very vividly and in great detail, often waking up in the morning feeling as though I have been physically active all night.

During the summer, when it doesn't get really dark here at all, I was going to bed at 3-4 am and getting up again at about 11, just because I could. So I was getting about 6 1/2 hrs each night. It was nice to not worry about getting up at my usual 6.45am to get the kids off to school etc so I just stayed up late watching TV each night.

However, during a normal working/school week, I'll go to bed at about 00.30 - 01.00 am and get up at 6.45 so I probably get by on average 6 hours each night regardless of the time of year.

But I find that about once a month, I am suddenly extremely tired for just one evening and have to go to bed at about 21.00 and sleep until 06.45.
 
I have never slept well.

But this was made much worse when I was a maintenance engineer at a food factory. Some nights I would be called out to fix problems. Often more than once; the record was four.

Then, of course, it is time to get up and go to work.

My present routine is to go to bed about 02:00-02:30.
I get off to sleep around 04:00, but have to wake up and take a tablet at 08:00.

I rise at around 10:00, feeling as if I haven't been to sleep at all.
Generally I begin to feel 'awake ' around 14:00.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
I have never slept well.

But this was made much worse when I was a maintenance engineer at a food factory. Some nights I would be called out to fix problems. Often more than once; the record was four.

Then, of course, it is time to get up and go to work.

My present routine is to go to bed about 02:00-02:30.
I get off to sleep around 04:00, but have to wake up and take a tablet at 08:00.

I rise at around 10:00, feeling as if I haven't been to sleep at all.
Generally I begin to feel 'awake ' around 14:00.

INT21
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I have similar problems, although not quite as extreme.
 
When I'm on lates I don't want to be woken by sunlight at dawn. My ploy for avoiding this is wearing a sleep mask, like you have on long haul flights. Works perfectly.

It's also good for falling asleep last thing, when I listen to youtube videos and podcasts on the laptop beside my bed. Blocks out the light from the screen.

My current sleep mask is an exotic leopardskin-effect affair, but you don't need anything as luxurious as that. Worth a try.
 
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