This Is What Insomnia Does to Your Body and Mind

It's not pretty!
Loukia Papadopoulos

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Have you ever lost some sleep only to end up neurotic, exhausted, and grumpy? That's because sleep is absolutely essential for our survival and denying your body rest can result in some pretty scary circumstances. 

In this video, we bring you information on what happens the longer you lose sleep. The video starts at the first 18 hours of being awake. During this time, you are more susceptible to a heart attack, you build up pro-inflammatory proteins and your number of immune cells begins to decrease.

After 24 hours of sleep loss, your brain starts to be affected: you begin to lose focus and memory. The symptoms can be compared to being drunk. In fact, according to the CDC, staying awake for 24 hours is similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.10 percent, which is higher than the 0.08 percent legal limit.

During this time, microsleep kicks in with short bursts of sleep that you don’t even realize are happening. These are dangerous as you can faint anywhere and even when you wake up you feel disoriented. 

The video then describes what happens when you’ve been awake for 36 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, and 96 hours. The symptoms get increasingly worse putting you in more and more danger. If you value your health, this is a video not to be missed.

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