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by lloeki 990 days ago
The post is mostly covering "mind" and "metabolic" things, but the effect extends to "body" things:

- more likely to avoid hurtful situations (lower attention, zone out events, micro sleep events, reflexes diminished).

- more likely to hurt yourself when such accidents occur

- once hurt, physical recovery is severely hampered

Car accidents are the obvious ones here but it extends to simple things like accidental cuts with knives, slipping in the tub, or sprained ankles or knees just walking down stairs or curbs.

And some other "mind" and "metabolic" things:

- immune system effectiveness plummets, so more chances to get sick

- REM deprivation causes neuronal death

- long term, leads to anxiety, false memories, paranoia, hallucinations, and psychosis (been there, done that; not a good place to be)

We all know that water is essential to not dying, but sleep appears to be on equal footing (3 days without either and you're in catastrophic states), maybe even more important (the - sad - record of a human surviving without water is 18 days, for sleep it's 10)

2 comments

I've notice I'm more prone to pimples and canker sores when I'm sleep deprived.
Canker sores for me happen if I'm 2-4 days of reduced sleep hours.

Supplementing lysine has been helpful in reducing canker sores over a long period of time. Cutting my incidences from 1 a month to 1 every 2-4 months. It also seems to effect how quickly it heals.

Is there a citation or source on REM deprivation causing neurons to die?

Like how long? How did they test this?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Lasting, which has a bunch and is a nice overview. Obviously underresearched for humans due to ethical concerns.