Can you die from lack of sleep?

Britain’s Tony Wright since 2007 has held the world record for deprivation of sleep, with 266 hours of continuous wakefulness, more than 11 days without sleeping awake. However, his record could never be approved, the Guinness Book having suspended the recording of sleep deprivation records deemed dangerous. Sleep is indeed essential for the functioning of the body.

Limited adaptation to lack of sleep

When the need to sleep is too pressing, some neurons go into “pause” mode while we remain seemingly awake. During student Randy Gardner’s previous record (264 hours without sleep in 1965), brain recordings showed that parts of the brain alternately taking “micronaps”. But this functioning alters motor activity and leads to attention deficits. Beyond 72 hours of wakefulness, serious cognitive disorders are felt (hallucinationscoordination problems, difficulties in speaking and reasoning, apathyparanoia, etc.).

Sleep deprivation: not a sufficient cause of death

In 1989, a study conducted on rats showed that when they are prevented from sleeping, rodents die after 11 to 32 days. In humans, cases of death from lack of sleep are extremely rare. In 2012, a 26-year-old Chinese boy died after 11 consecutive nights without sleep in order to watch all the Euro matches, succumbing to a mixture ofalcohol, tobacco and fatigue. In 2013, an intern at Merrill Lynch investment bank was found dead after working three nights in a row, but the exact cause of his death remains unclear, the young man also suffering from epilepsy. In short, unless one pathology associated, sleep deprivation cannot directly cause a person’s death.

Chronic sleep deficit: many deleterious effects on health

In the long run, however, the lack of sleep is harmful to the body. A chronic deficit leads to a decrease in vigilance, mood and memory disorders, physical and mental fatigue. It promotes the weight gainincreases the risk of depression, diabetesof cardiovascular illnesses or cancer. Many studies have shown an increased risk of death in people sleeping less than seven hours a night. The mechanism behind this increase is not yet very clear: the sleep deficit could increase the production of inflammatory cytokines and hormone stress, decrease immune capacity or cause disorders of the metabolism. It has even been proven that a single night spent without sleeping leads to DNA destruction. Curiously, sleeping too much also seems to increase the risk of death, but the cause of this correlation could not be clearly established.