Can a person die from not sleeping for a really long time?
104414
Cruel experiments on mice were done decades ago where the mice were kept awake and died after 23 days. The muscles just can't take it, the heart cannot keep up. In sleep the heart slows and less stress on the diaphram. In humans severe mental illness can be caused by no sleep. In fact, there have been cases of people having halucinations due to severe sleep deprivation. But it is not believed that a person would die like mice from no sleep. Ordinarily a person would just sleep where they stand if it came down to it, or collapse on the floor, wherever they are.
480048
No, only if you are sick, then it's normal if you sleep all day and night, or at least nap all day. Even if you hadn't slept much recently, that's too long to be considered normal.\n\nIf it only happened once I wouldn't worry about it!
819622
If you don't sleep you'll become ill and you won't be able to learn.  There's a reason our bodies require sleep.  Don't try to get around it.  Get your rest, exercise, and learn!
668393
the answer is 6-10 minutes if u are healthy, the question was how long u can LIVE not stay conscious. therefore the body organs and cells can last from 6-10 minutes.furthermore 4-6 minutes without minutes without breathing the cells begin to deteriorate, then 6-10 minutes without breathing the cells begin to die. u can only be resucitated after 10 minutes ONLY if your core temperature is well below normal hypothermic.
768924
Imagine being burned at the stake in front of a baying mob. Every worst nightmare you have ever had about dying has happened to someone.\nWhat if no one actually dies peacefully in their sleep, but is the victim of a nightmare so bad it kills them.\nI think its extended violence that I would want to avoid. Instant painless death in a car crash is possible. I would hate to die of my injuries 3 days later after suffering.
113897
I don't think so.  Sleep is a general term for four stages of brain wave changes: Stage 1 is the semi-conscious, sleepy feeling you have just before you fall asleep.  Stages 2 and 3 are dream states, and stage 4 is the deep, delta wave sleep that we need for our bodies to repair themselves.  Normally, at night we cycle through these 4 stages, even almost waking up which we just don't remember.  \n\nIn order to stay asleep and not be in a coma, you would have to "surface" to stage 1 and not wake up.  If you were in a place with absolutely no outside stimulation, you might stay asleep longer, but sooner or later, your body would develop aches (or bed sores) from laying down so long and that would be enough stimulus to wake up your mind.
1095512
Yes.\n\nFor once fiction writers and doctors agree: it's possible to die of fright, or for that matter grief, anger, joy, or just about any other intense emotion. Most victims are older, and likely in precarious health to start with, but a few are young--in some cases really young. One British kid, in what is surely a mother's worst nightmare, was reportedly so freaked out by a visit to the dentist in 1970 that she died of a heart attack at age four
1032900
not unless their sleep walking is putting them in danger. Sleep walking is actually a common and not abnormal behavior unless the person walks outside in traffic or tries cooking on the stove or something weird like that.\n\nhttp://familydoctor.org/160.xml
663709
She died at the age of 88 of natural causes.  To me that means she died in her sleep - probably her heart just stopped.  If there had been a "cause" like you seem to want, I would think the obituary would mention something else.
221264
The record is something like 12 days or so by a kid. Everyone will eventually succumb to the need to sleep but when in the question. They cannot figure out why our body needs sleep and one one has ever died from a lack of it. Some theorize that we sleep because back in the day humans needed to stay in at night to avoid getting killed by nocturnal animals.
325903
depends on what you consider a long time.  there are reports of Near Death Experiences of those who had been dead for hours and then were revived automatically, and they did revive by their soul returning to the body.  Now months or years down the road, not likely, but I wouldn't say impossible.
537057
"This person is going to sleep for awhile"
973807
Although it’s a common belief that 8 hours of sleep is required for optimal health, a six-year study of more than one million adults ages 30 to 102 has shown that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate. Individuals who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 4 hours a night, were shown to have a significantly increased death rate compared to those who averaged 6 to 7 hours.\n\nResearchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and the American Cancer Society collaborated on the study, which appeared in the February 15, 2002 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, a journal of the American Medical Association.\n\nAlthough the data indicated the highest mortality rates with long-duration sleep, the study could not explain the causes or reasons for this association.\n \nDaniel F. Kripke, M.D., in his sleep lab at UCSD.\n \nFirst author Daniel F. Kripke, M.D., a UCSD professor of psychiatry who specializes in sleep research, said “we don’t know if long sleep periods lead to death. Additional studies are needed to determine if setting your alarm clock earlier will actually improve your health.”\n\nBut, he added “individuals who now average 6.5 hours of sleep a night, can be reassured that this is a safe amount of sleep. From a health standpoint, there is no reason to sleep longer.”\n\nKripke is also a member of UCSD's Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging.\n\nThe study, which addressed sleep issues as part of the Cancer Prevention Study II (CPSII) of the American Cancer Society, also indicated that participants who reported occasional bouts of insomnia did not have an increased mortality rate, but those individuals who took sleeping pills were more likely to die sooner.\n\n“Insomnia is not synonymous with short sleep,” the authors said in the article. “Patients commonly complain of insomnia when their sleep durations are well within the range of people without sleep symptoms.”\n\nThey added that physicians believe most patient complaints about “insomnia” are actually related to depression, rather than a diagnosis of insomnia.\n\nWith 1.1 million participants, this was the first large-scale population study of sleep to also take into consideration variables such as age, diet, exercise, previous health problems, and risk factors such as smoking, in comparing longevity among the participants. In other words, individuals with specific characteristics were compared with individuals of a similar age, health background, etc.\n\nAlthough the study was conducted from 1982-88, the sleep results have not been available until recently due to the length of time required to input and analyze the vast amount and variety of data from the 1.1 million participants.\n\n“Previous sleep studies have indicated that both short- and long-duration sleep had higher mortality rates,” Kripke said. “However, none of those studies were large enough to distinguish the difference between 7 and 8 hours a night, until now.”\n  \nThe figures above indicate hours of sleep for men (left) and women (right). The hazard ratio, the top bar graph, indicates the mortality risk while the bottom graph shows the percentage of subjects associated with the reported number of hours sleep.\n \n The best survival rates were found among those who slept 7 hours per night. The study showed that a group sleeping 8 hours were 12 percent more likely to die within the six-year period than those sleeping 7 hours, other factors being equal. Even those with as little as 5 hours sleep lived longer than participants with 8 hours or more per night.\n\nThe mean age for women in the study was 57, while the mean age for men was 58. Within the six year period, 5.1 percent of the women had died and 9.4 percent of the men. The causes of death resembled the distribution for the general population.\n\nAdditional authors of the study were Lawrence Garfinkel, M.A., the American Cancer Society, New
863947
Adult requires a minimum sleep of 6 hours a day, sleeps will seriously effect your health in a very big way, if you do not get enough sleep, your anxienty, stress level will increase with ease, your mind will not think properly and also that your health will deteriorate extremely fast. so please try not to sleep at the minimum of 6 hours, get a healthy 8 to 9 hours. \n\nIn Korea this guy died of being awake for 50 straight hours playing online game. A few cases has happend already. so Take care Cheers
186199
It's different for each person, but realistically 24 hours is strethcing it, although I'm sure that there are people out there who have gone without sleep for two or even three days.  Its very dangerous though, and I would not suggest it.  Physically, your body is drained (without a regular sleep cycle, your body replaces sleep with calories, so if you're pulling an all-nighter you might want to have a few midnight snacks).  It can also hurt your mentally.  I have heard of people seeing some VERY strange things after going without sleep-- like they're delerious.  I read in a book that a study tested something like this and people began to see fires everywhere.... odd.  But at any rate, its not a good thing to try and do!
47396
I don't think you're passed out long enough. Plus I think you go to delta sleep and not rem sleep when you're unconscious, as opposed to asleep. I've only passed out once though, so what do I know.
936335
there are two possible ways to go with this. You can have a poison that decreases your respirations. So you would become more and more sleepy, and then your breathing would become more and more labored until you die. The other way to go is that your would have a drug that would cause massive contractions of your muscle. The contractions get so bad that your heart muscle contracts and beats irregularly