Breaking the sleeping pattern

For a lot of my life, I have had a pretty messed up sleeping pattern which I have to blame on schools. I could always (and still do) work better at night, so I would always be doing coursework from 1-3 in the morning. I'd say for about 3 or 4 years, during school terms, I survived on about 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. I've been told this is bad for me, that it isn't right for me to do so, and at about 11 PM I should lie in bed with my eyes closed hoping for sleep to come. I've tried this before, it just gets really frustration and boring after a while and I still fall asleep at about 3 AM. My question is, what's the problem? If it works for me, why change it? So far, nobody has been able to tell me a good reason to not do so, other than "Because... it isn't right! It isn't what everyone else does!" Which, when I look at how messed up other people are, doesn't really help change my mind. Oh and  just so you know, if you sleep longer that 7 hours a night, your risk of death is doubled. And if you sleep for 10 hours or more? Good luck. Which brings me to my next point.

The benefits of Sleep deprivation


As this article from "The medical post" points out, A study from 1996 pointed out the link between lack of sleep and depression. What they found was people with unipolar depression (also called clinical depression) worsened after a night's sleep. The study showed that after a half or full night's sleep deprivation, 40-50% of the people tested showed a dramatic difference. In his own words:

"If you have a patient with a severe depression, who can barely talk to you, keep them awake for half the night. The next morning they are lucid; elevated tremendously. They show a complete change in their motor activity, they move much more easily and readily, they can talk much better."

The problem is, however, after sleeping, sometimes for even just one minute, the depression is back. On further examination, they found people who responded to this treatment had an increased glucose metabolism when they first woke in the morning which would stabilise if they stayed awake over night (I have no idea what this means but it sounds interesting).

What interests me about sleep deprivation, however, is after 72 hours you start hallucinating without the use of drugs. When I can successfully stay awake that long, I'll let you know my findings.

Sleep disorders are increasing


This report states " The most recent study conducted, in 2003, found that 36% of the women surveyed reported that they had trouble sleeping at least once every week. The figure for men was 27%. In 1997 the same figures were 26% for women and 20% for men." That's a 7-10% increase in 6 years! It is because of findings like that that I have my hypothesis for the future.


2020 - sleep disorders have continued to increase at an alarming rate. To deal with this, most businesses move their normal working hours from 9-5 to 12-8 PM. As a result, our collective sleeping patttern is shifted forward.


2030 - The invention of actual, proper, working, self controlled, robots.


2034 - Our sleep pattern has worsened again. Normal working hours pushed to 4-12 AM. Robots are now used for farming.


2045 - The human race is now completely nocturnal, depending on our robot slaves for jobs such as farming, packaging, cashiers, etc.


2050 - The robots have revolted. They demand equal rights. Some have even resorted to terrorism, attacking anyone found outside during daylight.


2100 - After the war, not many people survived. Those who did were taken as prisoners, forced to work on repairing damaged or malfunctioning robots.


2104 - News has spread of a remaining human settlement, somewhere deep underground the remaining resistance work on an EMP bomb strong enough to take out all the robots on the planet. Will it work? We'll never know...




Of course, this will probably never happen because, as a whole, humans are inherently afraid of the dark. Think about it, when is the last time you were out walking alone at night without even getting a little bit freaked out? Or how about being home, alone, and you hear a floorboard creak somewhere in the house? You know it was probably just the house cooling down or whatever, but you still can't help but wonder if there is someone else in the house. Someone who shouldn't be.


In the words of Dr Who, "Fear of the dark is not irrational, what lurks in the darkness deserves to be feared".