Sleep deprivation.

how do others handle sleep deprivation? i handed in my final thesis plus other side projects yesterday morning, and have been able to reflect on my extensive sleep deprivation over the past three months.

ive worked out theres two components -
1. how you body handles it
2. how your minds handles it.

lets start with the body. when i work through the entire night with any sleep, the worst thing is how your digestive and food cycle gets completely screwed up. i snack during the night, but too much food makes me feel nauseous in the morning.
i have worked out that the type of food and drink consumption is critical. for previous all nighters - i survived on a steady stream of coffee, and cheese on toast. ive tryed switching the coffee for tea, ive tryed eating chips, junkfood and drinking coke.

for the 3 nites before i handed my thesis in, i was at uni and deprived of coffee and food supplies at night. i found that eating normally during the day, then having a massive pasta/rice dinner to pick at until midnight, then eating nothing till breakfast, was the best system. if i had a big dinner then topped up occaisonally, i didnt need to snack during the night. i hardly felt nauseous at all in the morning. additionally, i drank no tea or coffee - only water.

then theres the mental function. i found that i am more mentally alert and have greater endurance without caffiene - and thats in 3 days and nites without sleep. when i was so tired that i couldnt focus on the screen, i had a 10 minute power nap, and then i was fine again.

so, after 5 years of uni, ive worked out, that coffee and tea dont actually help me stay awake, and make me feel worse in the morning. caffiene can help me wake up in the morning, but its a short term solution. if staying up late its better to survive on small amounts of simple food and water.

what are everyone elses habits?

i'll tell you when i'm back in the habit in a month....only 1 mo. till i'm back...can't wait for the self-inflicted sleep deprivation to begin

youse can'ts spend whats youse dun got.

Oh, I'm a PRO (literally) at sleep deprivation.

Um...coffee, bright light, and whatever you do, don't eat (unless it's chocolate).

Okay im a pro at handeling strange shifts .

A: make sure you have 8 hours sleep
B: keep some sort of routine
C:Still exercise
D: don't eat large meals either

E:being careful cause caffine (im guilty of haveing 7 cups a day at times) , But also guilty of working 80 to 90 hours in a week as well

can be addictive

90 hours a week holy crap
heres me doin 58 and being buggered on set times
mabe i eat to many chicken burgers at smokeo

Used to do OK on the all night study and assignments at Uni.
Whats been much harder is the constant broken sleep that has come with three small ones.

Been waking at least twice a night for 10 years and I am still not used to it.

Now that I am used to it I find I cannot sleep a full night even when I get a chance....

90 hour weeks are standard if you're in the medical field. As are 36 hour shifts. It's 5:30 AM and I'm in the Emergency room right now. *shrug*

my experience is similar to yours Dentrassi. I found that, while writing my dissertation, caffine was often times more harmful to my ability to work. I spent more than 3 months in a manic state rarely getting more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep in any given 24 hour period. I would sit behind my computer writing and writing and making figures and what all until I caught myself just staring blankly at the screen for an unknown time period. at this point, I would go to my roomand sleep for an hour, then get back up, review my previous work (often astonished at how much I wrote without any recollection of having done so) and then keep going again till the next time I found it completely impossible to continue working. Usually I would get in about 12 hours work for every hour or 2 I slept. I was never really awake, and rarely sleeping in a real way - just that hard as a rock fashion without dreams where an hour of sleep feels like 20 seconds.

I was constantly in this one-track, semi-hallucinating state of mind and a type of mania manifested. Caffine only distracted from it. My concentration and working stamina did benifit a fair amount from an ADD drug that a young poi spinning associate of mine gave me a few of though (it wasn't ritalin, but I can't remember the name right now). Things were really nuts there for a while. I now understand workaholism - it's not for me, but I understand it now.

In the end, that season of sleep deprivation took its toll - I recieved my first gray hairs and mild vetiligo (patches of skin depigmentation - kind of like gray hair for skin I guess) as a result. I now consider these things part of the dues I had to pay to become Dr. Vanize, but I was certainly very unhappy about both in the beginning.

The worst thing is when you pull of an all nighter and your just 2 tired 2 do anything - you may aswell just go to bed and get up earlier when your all refreshed. The first thing to go for me is my eyesight, my eyes start to spin and i cant focus. xxx

so true my eyes go like that and they dry up and if i close my eyes they sting for abit and produce tears but it will only help for about 3 seconds then colour disapears again very werid seeing everything in grays

Music and noise is a key factor for me. Also, like Lightning said, bright light. And for me, insence helps me concentrate like mad. And always need something to drink near by, keeping the fluids coming in.

Clicky pens for when I'm concentrating, or have completely zoned out.

Never work/study in bed, it'll make you want to sleep. I also find that just not being in my house helps a lot, because I don't feel like there's a million things that I have todo. Thenagain, an open library or lab at 4am might be kinda hard to find, I guess.

~ Bobo

sleep depravation is fun! you see such pretty colours!!!

sorry - been looking at my quote list again & had to throw that in!!

I'm convinced that resting the eyes is a good 70% of the reason why humans have to sleep so long.

I am the only one I know who doesn't have sleep deprivation.

All of my friends are insomniacs, all to varying degrees - some severe, some not so.

It makes me feel lucky that I sleep well everynight. Given the chance, I'd sleep for weeks.

If anything my problem is that I sleep too much.

its all habit,

when i was a bartender doing 60-70 a week (not including partying) I never got regular sleep. In the summer I never saw the moon and in the winter i never saw the sun. I even inverted my sarcadion (no idea how to spell that) rythym.

Later when I got an office job i couldn't get to sleep with out the light on. I thinks its also made me photo sensitive. (all you nightowls know what I mean)

sleep, or the lack of it can really mess with you head. much respect to the scandinavians.

I agree about the coffee too. temporary fix and not worth the come down. Water all the way and nothing else works for me.

and power napping, im all about the naps, the trick is to go pro active as soon as you get up.

hooray for power naps!! they're the way forward!

i'm a bit of a night-owl and that goes hand in hand with bouts of insomnia.

i feel like i could sleep for ireland right now, but by the time i get home i'll be wide awake with the whacky wake-up club! i get a lovely 25 min power nap on the bus home each evening. would be lost without it. the humming of the engine just sends me off to the land of nod.

so yeah, i've got the art of power-napping down to a T. and i don't even drool or snore in public any more

I once drove from London to Morocco and was hallucinating by the time I got to Spain; there was a service station in the middle of repairs and I was absolutely convinced it was Tony Robinson and the Time team doing it. My co-driver grabbed the steering wheel at one point to "avoid the bloody great crocodile in the middle of the road."

For the record we had a mechanic who bought 4 oz of resin, smoked the lot in 2 weeks and when we broke down decided that it was because the engine was full of goats.

I'm crap with no sleep; I become bitch queen from hell at 10 each night as it is. No answers.

Ok, reasons I'm glad I don't drive in Europe.

I just made a mistake. I ate something other than chocolate and I'm lying on the floor.

Idiot I am. :rolleyes: