Comment by Symmetry
4 days ago
Could this be an explanation for why people who go without sleep for long enough eventually just die? The Guinness Book of World Records doesn't accept records on staying awake for the same reason they don't accept records for the longest game of Russian Roulette.
While it is true that Guiness stopped keeping track of records of staying awake for health reasons, people with severe sleep deprivation ends up being psychotic and admitted to psychiatric care and administered sleep inducing drugs. So, lack of sleep is not something you die from short term. Long term (years, decades) short sleep is associated with higher all cause mortality risk though.
I'm getting this from the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. There were some other exaggerations in the book that people have noted, though, so maybe I was too trusting of this particular fact.
there's this prion disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_insomnia
And there is the hereditary version: fatal familial insomnia [FFI]) stemming from a mutation in the PRNP gene.
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