[hinkley]

There’s a phenomenon we have known about since at least the late 1980s when Race Across America riders were using it.

Essentially these guys try to stay up for the first few days and then sleep less than 8 hours after that. Way less. Many of them end up hallucinating by the end, and only their extreme fitness levels probably save them from just dying from lack of sleep.

The trick is that waking up to daylight makes you feel more rested. So the teams would have their riders sleep 2-3 hours from just before dawn until dawn so they would wake up to sunlight. Physiologically the difference is small, but psychologically it’s much bigger.

Some of the effect of power napping is likely the same sort of trickery, just as caffeine is partly trickery and partly adrenal.

[ra]

I used to do adventure races of 24 or 48 hour duration. can confirm that after 20+ hours of endurance you 100% start having microsleeps and hallucinations. 20 mins sleep is all you need to get going again for a few more hours.

[hinkley]

Seen any pink elephants?

[Ccecil]

At that point...shadow elephants.

[hinkley]

My dad got afib from doing a 24 hour challenge and I’m so glad I never participated. Be careful out there.

The only marathon I ever did was cram for a couple finals and playing computer games between them and after. I was working on 72 hours when the blue on my monitor started to ripple and decided it was time to go to bed… almost an hour after it started.

[justinclift]

> dying from lack of sleep.

Is that actually a thing, rather than just hearsay?

[hinkley]

Lack of sleep exacerbates existing medical conditions to a substantial degree. Cortisol levels and inflammation markers start to rise after around two days.

And in particular if you abuse epinephrine enough. Caffeine blocks the sensation of fatigue, epinephrine does it even moreso, and up until I was in college, when my roommate told me about it, could be purchased from truck stops as an “allergy medication” but truckers use it to pull double shifts. If you keep taking it you will feel fine right up until you keel over.

South Korea has places you can rent a computer. Some are 24 hour. There was a case a while back where a middle aged man stayed awake for around 50 hours and died at his computer. Officially he died from lack of sleep.

[withinboredom]

Yes. There is even a prion disease you can get that makes it so you can’t fall asleep, causing you to go crazy… then catatonic, then die.