Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the effects of acute total sleep deprivation and chronic partial sleep restriction. Complete absence of sleep over long periods is impossible for humans to achieve (unless they suffer from fatal familial insomnia); brief microsleeps cannot be avoided. Long-term total sleep deprivation has caused death in lab animals.
Read more about Sleep Deprivation: Physiological Effects, Sleep Apnea, Mental Illness, School, Counteracting The Effects of Sleep Deprivation, Longest Period Without Sleep, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words sleep and/or deprivation:
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“All beauty, resonance, integrity,
Exist by deprivation or logic
Of strange position.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)