Longest u've been awake

[atlashead]

3 days here

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

LOL...

What a topic for a thread.

 

I once went five days without sleep back when I was addicted to crack cocaine. I learned a new threshold for headaches, ironically after I crashed and woke up, not before (although I did get headaches during those five days).

If I could go back and redo that, I would. Now I've got bragging rights, but so what? So the fuck what?

I now prefer the life I missed and I can't get that time back. And then there's this. I don't think I permanently damaged anything in my body or brain in a serious way, but it could be a ticking time bomb. I don't think it is... I hope it isn't...

Don't ever do that (the crack or the 5 days).

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

When I was young and rather stupid I did 4 days.  Never again! Never, never again.  At my current age I cannot even do one day without some sleep. 

No one really knows why we have to sleep, but sleep we must.  If sleep deprivation is  imposed long enough on a victim, the victim will die. 

However there are a few cases of people who cannot sleep.  They rest when they are tired but they do not go into any stages  of sleep.  No one knows exactly why these people can do without sleep.  Please see 

http://boingboing.net/2016/02/05/the-people-who-reportedly-neve.html

[jts]

26 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

No one really knows why we have to sleep, but sleep we must.

This commonly repeated statement always puzzled me. The reason why we need sleep should be obvious. I am puzzled by the fact that scientists with all their knowledge don't know why we need sleep.

Is it not obvious that sleep generates energy? Perhaps a special kind of energy, energy of brain and nervous system, what some people call nerve energy.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

14 minutes ago, jts said:

This commonly repeated statement always puzzled me. The reason why we need sleep should be obvious. I am puzzled by the fact that scientists with all their knowledge don't know why we need sleep.

Is it not obvious that sleep generates energy? Perhaps a special kind of energy, energy of brain and nervous system, what some people call nerve energy.

 

Energy is generated by glycolysis  and the breakdown of ATP.  Your use of the word "energy" is inexact and has no thermodynamic referent.;  

The precise chemical  processes that produce sleep are not fully understood.  

The reason you are puzzled is that you don't know enough chemistry and thermodynamics. 

14 minutes ago, jts said:

 

 

 

[jts]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Energy is generated by glycolysis  and the breakdown of ATP.  Your use of the word "energy" is inexact and has no thermodynamic referent.;  

The precise chemical  processes that produce sleep are not fully understood.  

The reason you are puzzled is that you don't know enough chemistry and thermodynamics. 

 

Glycolysis makes usable energy out of glucose. Glucose ultimately comes from food, going thru a number of biochemical steps. But there is more to energy than just food. You will last longer sleeping and not eating than eating and not sleeping. You can interpret 'last longer' any way you want; until you feel miserable or until death.

The mechanism that generates energy during sleep is perhaps not fully understood. But how does that prevent us from observing the fact that energy is generated during sleep?

It is obvious to me that sleep generates energy and I am puzzled that it is not obvious to everyone else, considering that it is a fact that everybody can observe every day.

Speaking just for myself, not for others, I observe the following facts:

*  I am always without exception physically in body stronger immediately after a good sleep than I am at the end of the day without sleep for some hours.

*  It was my habit for some years that before I went shopping, I got extra sleep and went shopping as soon as possible after the sleep in order to have the physical bodily strength to do shopping. (Being semi-paralysed neck down by a spinal cord tumor required this.)

*  During a fast (living on air and distilled water and sleep and nothing else), if I sleep lots the fast goes well; if I don't sleep enough the fast does not go well. Sleep seems to be almost a substitute for food during a fast, even tho to you that is no doubt an unscientific statement.

*  Some years ago before I got more adapted to fasting, I was on a fast and I wanted to end the fast but I was too physically weak to go to the store to buy food and there was no food. So I did a marathon sleep and it strengthened me enough that I was able to go to the store to buy food.

*  Sleep not only strengthens the body; but also the mind (or brain if you prefer). I spent 2 weeks trying to debug a computer program that I made and accomplished nothing. Then I figured to hell with this, I need sleep. I did a 3 day marathon sleep and then went back to the computer. I had a wonderful clarity of thought and mental energy and got everything done in 2 hours. Sleep made the difference.

*  The above is the most extreme example but I observed many times that my ability to do programming and solve chess puzzles depends on how much sleep I get. If I have 10 hours to play with, I probably would get more done if I sleep 8 hours first and then program 2 hours than if I spend the whole 10 hours programming.

I am not overly concerned about how sleep works. I know it works. It generates some kind of energy, perhaps a kind of energy currently not well understood.

We know at least this much about sleep, that it generates ATP, adenosine triphosphate. Adenosine causes sleepiness. When cats are injected with adenosine, they promptly go to sleep. During sleep adenosine is used to make ATP. When the adenosine is used up, we are slept out and we naturally wake up. During being awake we accumulate adenosine and eventually get sleepy.

I am not saying ATP is the mysterious 'nerve energy' that some health writers write about. ATP seems to be too short term to be that. The mystery remains. Perhaps there is no need to solve this mystery; just get enough sleep.

Blessings be upon him who invented sleep.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

14 minutes ago, jts said:

Glycolysis makes usable energy out of glucose. Glucose ultimately comes from food, going thru a number of biochemical steps. But there is more to energy than just food. You will last longer sleeping and not eating than eating and not sleeping. You can interpret 'last longer' any way you want; until you feel miserable or until death.

The mechanism that generates energy during sleep is perhaps not fully understood. But how does that prevent us from observing the fact that energy is generated during sleep?

It is obvious to me that sleep generates energy and I am puzzled that it is not obvious to everyone else, considering that it is a fact that everybody can observe every day.

Speaking just for myself, not for others, I observe the following facts:

*  I am always without exception physically in body stronger immediately after a good sleep than I am at the end of the day without sleep for some hours.

*  It was my habit for some years that before I went shopping, I got extra sleep and went shopping as soon as possible after the sleep in order to have the physical bodily strength to do shopping. (Being semi-paralysed neck down by a spinal cord tumor required this.)

*  During a fast (living on air and distilled water and sleep and nothing else), if I sleep lots the fast goes well; if I don't sleep enough the fast does not go well. Sleep seems to be almost a substitute for food during a fast, even tho to you that is no doubt an unscientific statement.

*  Some years ago before I got more adapted to fasting, I was on a fast and I wanted to end the fast but I was too physically weak to go to the store to buy food and there was no food. So I did a marathon sleep and it strengthened me enough that I was able to go to the store to buy food.

*  Sleep not only strengthens the body; but also the mind (or brain if you prefer). I spent 2 weeks trying to debug a computer program that I made and accomplished nothing. Then I figured to hell with this, I need sleep. I did a 3 day marathon sleep and then went back to the computer. I had a wonderful clarity of thought and mental energy and got everything done in 2 hours. Sleep made the difference.

*  The above is the most extreme example but I observed many times that my ability to do programming and solve chess puzzles depends on how much sleep I get. If I have 10 hours to play with, I probably would get more done if I sleep 8 hours first and then program 2 hours than if I spend the whole 10 hours programming.

I am not overly concerned about how sleep works. I know it works. It generates some kind of energy, perhaps a kind of energy currently not well understood.

We know at least this much about sleep, that it generates ATP, adenosine triphosphate. Adenosine causes sleepiness. When cats are injected with adenosine, they promptly go to sleep. During sleep adenosine is used to make ATP. When the adenosine is used up, we are slept out and we naturally wake up. During being awake we accumulate adenosine and eventually get sleepy.

I am not saying ATP is the mysterious 'nerve energy' that some health writers write about. ATP seems to be too short term to be that. The mystery remains. Perhaps there is no need to solve this mystery; just get enough sleep.

Blessings be upon him who invented sleep.

 

Energy does not come from sleeping.  It comes from eating food.

[jts]

19 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Energy does not come from sleeping.  It comes from eating food.

Perhaps you are confusing 2 kinds of energy. The chemical energy in food needs to be converted to usable energy. Try the scientific experiment I suggested. In which case do you last longer? Sleeping and not eating? Or eating and not sleeping?

 

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, jts said:

Perhaps you are confusing 2 kinds of energy. The chemical energy in food needs to be converted to usable energy. Try the scientific experiment I suggested. In which case do you last longer? Sleeping and not eating? Or eating and not sleeping?

 

All physical energies are transformable.  For example Jame Joule  in 1859 show the equivalence of mechanical energy and heat energy by turning paddles in water and heating the water up thus increasing the temperature.   The internal energy of substances consists of  kinetic energy, potential energy,  energy of rotations (of atoms and molecules) and energy of vibrations between atoms in molecules.  All know physical forms of energy are comeasurable and can be transformed into each other.   For example a swinging pendulum.  When the bob is up it has gravitational potential  energy which is transformed into mechanical kinetic energy as it falls down and from kinetic energy back to potential energy as it swings up.   In a purely mechanical transformation energy is conserved.  When friction occurs   mechanical energy is transformed into heat (a disorganized from of energy that dissipates).   Total energy is conserved, but entropy increases. (First and Second laws of thermodynamics).   Sleeping may slow the dissipation of energy but it does transform potential energy into chemical energy, electrical energy  or mechanical energy. When we are sleeping we produce fewer calories of heat energy than when we are awake or exercising, because we are not  breaking molecules down as fast to get the energy out of the ATP to ADP  transformation. 

All of which says we have to rest to give our muscles a chance to reconstitute themselves.  But why must we become unconscious?   No one really knows the answer. When we are sleeping our brains are busy, busy  drawing on the energy of decomposed sugars.  So why can't we stay awake?  Nobody knows at this juncture.  The necessity for sleep is still an unsolved problem.  

[william.scherk]

9 hours ago, jts said:

Is it not obvious that sleep generates energy?

No, it is not immediately obvious, not to me. What kind of energy do you mean? And how does Sleep generate this unspecified energy, to your understanding?

I can read into your question something that is perhaps not there:  It is obvious that the living human body generates (more/different kind of) energy during sleep -- whereas during a state of being awake, such (unspecified) energy is not generated by the body. But that is not what you are pointing at ...

Charitably, I think I understand what you are getting at. During waking hours we are active in a way we are not during sleep -- all things being equal. When we are awake we expend energy in motion, cogitation -- expending much of our organism's energy budget in servicing the brain.

When we sleep, our energy expenditure drops.  Bodily processes are different than during the waking state ... muscles are repaired, dream-processing occur. And when we wake we are 'refreshed.' As far as I know, there are few if any living organisms that do not have sleep or 'rest' periods of relative inactivity. Do fish sleep? Do unicellular organisms sleep?  Do spiders and insects sleep?

I claim no special knowledge or expertise -- in fact, I am pretty ignorant. One item from this week's science-y news that could help pay my rent here is Do Trees Sleep?

Edited May 25, 2016 by william.scherk
Added "Do Trees Sleep?" and buffered the tone.

[jts]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

No, it is not immediately obvious, not to me. What kind of energy do you mean? And how does Sleep generate this unspecified energy, to your understanding?

I gave examples. These and other examples are enough to convince me that sleep generates energy. Can you go thru these examples one by one and explain why you don't believe sleep generated energy in the example? Perhaps you have so much energy that a little more or a little less doesn't make any difference.

What kind of energy it is at its root is perhaps not yet known. So what? I'm not sure that it is totally unspecified. Tilden and Shelton called it 'nerve energy'. I don't much care. It is real, whatever it is.

How sleep generates energy is perhaps not yet known. So what? Perhaps Robert Walter's great law of life explains that. I don't much care. When I want energy, I sleep.

It is almost a law of physiology that any 2 intense physiological processes happening at same time will have a tradeoff between them. Examples: digestion vs elimination; intense mental activity vs intense physical activity; digestion vs prolonged intense physical activity; healing vs almost everything else. Perhaps there is a tradeoff between consciousness and something that happens during sleep.

I accept that some things exist that I don't fully understand. A fact of observation is a fact of observation even if I can't fully explain it.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, jts said:

 

How sleep generates energy is perhaps not yet known. So what? Perhaps Robert Walter's great law of life explains that. I don't much care. When I want energy, I sleep.

 

Awake or asleep a  live organism metabolizes  food or absorbs light energy to synthesized food.   All energy fluxes in living organisms (on this planet)  are ultimately  realized by  removal of a phosphorus ion  from ATP to produce ADP.   Metabolism in most plants,  animals  or bacteria  is quite well known.

There are many questions related to sleep   but none of them are thermodynamic questions.   A sleep does not "generate" energy.  The amount of energy in  the cosmos is constant.  Energy can be moved, transferred,  dissipated  but its quantity never changes.  All non-reversible transfers or dissipation of energy increases energy thereby lowered the amount of mechanical work that can be produced by the energy in the state that results after dissipation.

Thermodynamics 101.   The Second Law  Rules. 

Do not confuse feeling  better after sufficient sleep with creating energy out of nothing. 

[RobinReborn]

When you're sleeping your neurons are firing much slower than when you're awake.  I think sleep is more of a reset for your nervous system then a way of generating energy.

[Mikee]

I know I shouldn't bother, but:  Mitochondria

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, Mikee said:

I know I shouldn't bother, but:  Mitochondria

Mitochondria do not create energy.  They disperse and dissipate energy just like every other living thing on this planet.  Ultimately they live on sunshine, just like we do.

3 hours ago, Mikee said:

 

 

[Mikee]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Mitochondria do not create energy.  They disperse and dissipate energy just like every other living thing on this planet.  Ultimately they live on sunshine, just like we do.

 

You are contextually inaccurate.  These don't create energy either (but they need to be refueled):

Edited to add:  You remind me of Sheldon (BBT):  Sheldon: "I am not crazy. My mother had me tested."

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, Mikee said:

You are contextually inaccurate.  These don't create energy either (but they need to be refueled):

Edited to add:  You remind me of Sheldon (BBT):  Sheldon: "I am not crazy. My mother had me tested."

They are transforming the action potentials of the fuel molecules  to heat which expands gases to push pistons (or turbines) to produce kinetic motion.  It is a transformation that spreads energy (dispersion and dissipation) and lowers the work capability of the energy of the exhaust gases.  In short,  entropy is increased.  No energy is created.  It is transformed by dispersion and dissipation.  The result of increased entropy  is there is less work capable of being done by the degraded energy.   Entropy is the measure of  how much work capability is lost to energy when it is transformed (dispersed or dissipated).  Heat produces degraded energy. Of course cars have to be refueled.  They have to have a quantity of high grade energy capable of producing mechanical work. Once the fuel is burned we have low grade dissipated energy (plus kinetic energy which is the result of mechanical work).  This is also why we have to keep on eating.  Food is a source of energy capable to doing work.  From which we get motion, nerve impulses and an reconstitution of ADP  to ATP.  They rest of the energy is disorganized heat related energy which increases the entropy of world. In short  we degrade the energy potential of food to produce the motions and functions necessary to keep on living. 

[Jules Troy]

I worked a 56 hour shift once.  No stims other than a thermos of coffee.