Why you shouldn’t pull an all-nighter, and how to deal if you have no choice
Sleep deprivation can be as dangerous as drinking alcohol, and can have a serious effect on your memory, mood and diet
We’ve all been there. You’ve got to finish that essay or hand in that assignment first thing in the morning, and you just haven’t finished. You can’t get an extension on the deadline, so you think to yourself, “I’ll just stay up all night to finish. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Surprisingly – a lot.
After just one night without sleep, your body feels it. Here’s some expert analysis of the exact damage one harmless little all-nighter can actually do.
Sleep-deprived – or drunk?
“Eight hours of sleep is essential for normal body function,” says Dr Janette Nesheiwat, Medical Director at US health care company CityMD. “The effects of lack of sleep have been compared to being as dangerous as drinking alcohol.”
One study found that after 17 to 19 hours without sleep, participants performed worse than someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.05 per cent. After a few more hours without sleep, they performed about as well as people with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 per cent (0.02% higher than the drunk driving limit in the US).
Sleep = a memory machine
“In a nutshell, sleep consolidates memory; a lot of the information you take in while you’re awake is processed while you’re sleeping,” says New York-based Dr David Greuner.
“Not only your memory is affected, but your ability to solve problems is also hindered, in addition to your alertness, attention, concentration and judgment. Your brain isn’t as efficient as it should be.”
A 2013 study from the University of California, Berkeley, in the US found that during sleep, your memories are essentially moved from short-term holding to long-term storage. When you get poor quality sleep, those memories don’t move to the prefrontal cortex for storage and they’re forgotten.
So, staying up all night to study is one of the worst possible moves. “When you pull an all-nighter – even just one – the lack of sleep can have tremendous effects on your mind and your body,” says Greuner.
Screwing with your circadian rhythm
