Sleep deprivation is a complete or partial refusal from sleep, in other words, insomnia. The use of this concept for medicinal purposes causes a lot of controversy regarding its benefits or harms. Our task is to help you understand its essence, and not give it an assessment.
Naturally, a person cannot help but sleep constantly, but in his power to limit this process to a minimum (several hours a day). Sleep deprivation has several main stages:
- The main thing is not to sleep! This is the initial stage, which lasts from one to six days. During this period, a person will constantly struggle with sleep. The main task is to go into sleep only for 2 hours, and not all night or day. It is important here - not to break loose, to maintain psychological calm. To do this, you need to diversify your activities in a state of wakefulness, do something new and interesting. Moreover, the case that you choose should not be monotonous (watching television shows or clicking seeds), but active. Remember that during this period you may experience nervous tension, frustration, and you may feel bad. However, having experienced this stage, you will feel that such a state will pass by itself.
- The second stage of sleep deprivation is shock therapy. It can last up to 10 days. This period is characterized by impaired consciousness: people will seem to you robots, perception of the surrounding reality may be disturbed. Sometimes the memory will fail: a person will forget what happened a minute ago, the confusion of the past and the present will begin (you cannot distinguish between these two concepts for some time). Mild euphoria is possible.
- This stage is fraught with constant insomnia, but the body is already adapting to deprivation. All body systems are aggravated, processes are accelerated (a clear perception of the world, aggravation of feelings and a sense of euphoria). However, if insomnia does not pass, the next stage sets in, which is mortally life-threatening.
- Hallucinations. At this stage, there may be visual hallucinations. Sleep deprivation should not start from this stage, because it can end with paranoia or a psychiatric hospital.
Today , doctors use this technique to get a person out of deep depression. However, the essence of the method used in this case is that the cyclical nature of sleep gradually changes, the number of hours spent in sleep, and the period of wakefulness increases. Doctors believe that sleep deprivation selectively affects some brain areas. Moreover, those areas that are not associated with a depressive state do not undergo any effect. This justifies a small number of side effects.
Sleep deprivation, the consequences of which can be very serious for the human psyche, should be carried out only under the supervision of doctors. The fact is that prolonged sleep deprivation can cause an epileptic seizure, even if a person has never had this disease.
Many participants in the experiments on prolonged refusal from sleep spoke positively about the effect of this technique: at some point, the body's working capacity increases, bright hallucinations occur, euphoria begins, which is characterized by an increase in the severity of perception of the world. However, it is important to get out of this condition in time, because sleep deprivation can develop into psychosis, the treatment of which can take a long time.
Many great personalities, through the use of this technique, increased their creative abilities, which, in many respects, contributed to an increase in scientific discoveries on a global scale and the creation of great works of art. And this, you see, is worth a lot.