By Gary Marshall
Sleep deprivation isn’t just being a bit tired from a big night out. It’s the result of too little sleep for too long a period, and it messes with your body and your brain in strange and sometimes frightening ways.
Whether the cause is insomnia, infants or something else entirely, there are some things that the sleep deprived know all too well. Here are 18 things you only know if you’re sleep deprived.
1. Reading is hard
If you’re truly sleep deprived, you’ll get to the end of this article without remembering any of it.
2. Your eyelids mess with you
Nobody else can see it, but it feels like your lower eyelid is constantly waving at the world.
3. Some cars are invisible
This is one of the scariest effects of sleep deprivation: near misses with cars you genuinely didn’t know were there. Sleep-deprived driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving.
4. Easy stuff is really hard
Sleep deprivation doesn’t do too much damage to the big, clever stuff – you can still go to work and do your job, mostly – but it robs you of your ability to do simple things like finding your car keys or remembering your own surname.
5. Kids’ TV goes crazy after dark
Baby TV in particular seems to be made entirely by people mashed on psychedelics. It’s weirdly watchable when you can’t go to bed.
6. Sleep deprivation makes you carb crazy
There’s hunger, and then there’s no-sleep-give-me-toast-right-now-or-somebody-will-die hunger. To make things worse, the stuff you crave is of the high calorie, quick fix variety.
7. You get a second wind just as you’re about to go to bed
Because life is cruel.
8. You’ll buy any old crap
Lack of sleep affects your impulse control, which is why your house is now full of mad stuff you bought on eBay.
9. You can’t remember a damn thing
Your short term memory needs sleep to become long term memory. Poor sleep makes remembering things more difficult.
10. You’re incredibly clumsy
Normally you’re as graceful as a gazelle. Without enough sleep you’re smashing glasses, knocking things off shelves and doing a pretty good impression of a drunken rhino.
11. Your partner is really annoying
Lack of sleep gives you a short fuse. They’re (probably) not any more annoying than usual, you’re just more irritable.
12. You forget how to talk
And you’ll stare at things wondering what the hell they’re called. What’s that boily water thing?
13. You don’t make it to the end of anything
Even Happy Valley can’t keep you awake to the end of an episode. Reading an entire book seems like an impossible dream.
14. You become a really light sleeper
Your body has two really excellent jokes to play on you: it makes you hypersensitive so that you wake up at the slightest noise, and it wakes you up in the middle of the night for no good reason so you can remember something stupid you said in 1993. Thanks, body! Thanks a bunch!
15. You don’t need to do drugs to have hallucinations
Go long enough without sleep and you start to see all kinds of scary stuff. That’s not a recommendation.
16. Naps can make you worse
It sounds weird, but a nap really can make you more tired. If you go beyond the 20 to 30 minute mark, you’ll enter REM sleep and wake up feeling like you’ve been hit by a bus.
17. Lack of sleep makes you sweary
Normally, butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. A few weeks of sleep deprivation and you’re using language that’d make Quentin Tarantino blush.
18. It feels like it’ll go on forever
It’s hard to accept this when you’re in the trenches, but it’s temporary. If you’re a sleep deprived parent, this too will pass. If there’s another cause, lifestyle changes – more exercise, less booze, no smartphones before bedtime – can make a difference. And if that doesn’t work, speak to your GP.
http://metro.co.uk/2016/02/19/18-things-youll-only-know-if-youre-sleep-deprived-5684443/
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