Insomnia can kill you

In the case study of an Italian family where of 288 relatives over 6 generations, 29 are affected by the disorder. The average age of onset of the disease is 49, but this may vary with the individual as with one female who was 61 years of age. Her disease lasted 18 months and followed the following pattern of the disease.

There are four stages of the disease before an individual's life ends. The first stage is progressive insomnia, the trade mark of fatal familial insomnia. The first stage develops over approximately four months and includes a collection of psychiatric problems such as panic attacks and bizarre phobias. The second stage includes hallucinations, panic, agitation and sweating and lasts about five months. The third stage lasts about three months and is total insomnia with weight loss. The individual at this point looks much older and may experience incontinence. The fourth stage is around six months long and is recognized as dementia, total insomnia and sudden death after becoming mute.

www-personal.umd.umich.edu...

Boy am I glad I don't have insomnia. I didn't know you could have it for a while before it developed into a killer disease internally.

Wow� and I thought you just stayed up all night making soap�.

I don't believe in insomnia! There's no way you can watch C-SPAN and not fall asleep.

Peace out

Makes sen5e to me!

You've got to figure that if one's body repares itself during periods of inactivity and the body never gets that repare, then eventually it is going to deteriate. There is a movie that appears to be interesting called The Machinist which is about this topic.

I have insomnia...oh dear
It was nice knowing you all

Originally posted by Jonna
There is a movie that appears to be interesting called The Machinist which is about this topic.

Looks like a damn good flick!

Originally posted by Dr Love

Originally posted by Jonna
There is a movie that appears to be interesting called The Machinist which is about this topic.

Looks like a damn good flick!

Ya, I'll be catching this one on video. I have a thing for films where the main character slowly goes insane. Go figure!

I have insomnia and don't have any of those things But I can tell you that the less I sleep the more pain I feel and the crankier I get So you add no sleep and the weather this week and I am one hurting pup

jm

I sleep on average maybe 3-4 hours a night...should i be worried?!?! pfffft oh well it was a good run

I just hate the fact of working / sleeping 2/3rd's of your life.

I read about a raideo host in the 1920s staid awake on air for a month
and was never the same again. anebodey heard of this story or have any links to it.

I've read that you will die if you go without sleep for around 2-3weeks, no idea hw they figure this out though! anyone want to volunteer?

Lol and I thought insomnia was cool in Fight club

I know hitler did a lot of testing on sleep deprivation on the Jews. The ethics of using that research is a big debate, however. I thought I remeber seeing about a week before your immune system crashes. There's pretty mixed reports about the psychological effects. As a college student I regularly go without sleep, so I've researched this area a bit. Apparently green tea will stave the negative effects on the immune system, but not for long.
As far as the three to four hours a night of sleep, it's not unhealthy. Ben Franklin taught himself to sleep four hours a night. The amount of sleep you need varies fro mperson to person.

Well, i must be on the last stage of insomnia then. I havent had more than 4 hours of sleep since i was in High School and that was many moons ago.
Sounds more like old wife tales or an Urban Legend

My cigarretes, whad i do with them???

Ahh, the frog has them!

[edit on 27-11-2004 by dgtempe]

No, hasn't killed me yet. I think my brain will hemorage first.

dgt, you are truly demented. I love it!

Sleep deprivation will surely kill you, and the symptoms are as described in the article.

However, I have never known anyone to read more than a paragraph of an aircraft tech manual and have problems falling asleep.

This disease is treatable; the doctors just need to be made away of military manuals!!

What is being described here is not your garden variety insomnia. This is an organic syndrome with similarities to Alzheimer's.

Fatal Familial Insomnia
by: Ann M. Akroush

Fatal familial insomnia is a genetic disorder. It manifests itself by many symptoms due to the degeneration of a certain part of the brain, the thalamus. The disease also results in the formation of amyloid plaques. This is the build up of a waxy substance made of proteins associated with polysaccharides.

www-personal.umd.umich.edu...

Compare:

The formation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are thought to contribute to the degradation of the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain and the subsequent symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

AMYLOID PLAQUES

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease is the accumulation of amyloid plaques between nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. Amyloid is a general term for protein fragments that the body produces normally. Beta-amyloid is a fragment of a protein that is snipped from another protein called amyloid precursor protein (APP). In a healthy brain, these protein fragments would be broken down and eliminated. In Alzheimer's disease, the fragments accumulate to form hard, insoluble plaques.

NEUROFIBRILLARY TANGLES

Neurofibrillary tangles consist of insoluble twisted fibers that are found inside of the brain's cells. They primarily consist of a protein called tau, which forms part of a structure called a microtubule. The microtubule helps transport nutrients and other important substances from one part of the nerve cell to another. In Alzheimer's disease, however, the tau protein is abnormal and the microtubule structures collapse.



www.ahaf.org...

[edit on 04/11/28 by GradyPhilpott]

Originally posted by BillyD
I know hitler did a lot of testing on sleep deprivation on the Jews. The ethics of using that research is a big debate, however. I thought I remeber seeing about a week before your immune system crashes. There's pretty mixed reports about the psychological effects. As a college student I regularly go without sleep, so I've researched this area a bit. Apparently green tea will stave the negative effects on the immune system, but not for long.
As far as the three to four hours a night of sleep, it's not unhealthy. Ben Franklin taught himself to sleep four hours a night. The amount of sleep you need varies fro mperson to person.

Hitler was drugged with over doses of speed and his army was also pumped with the drug to do better on the battlefields.
That might explain his violent behaviors?! and acting like a madman when hes giving a speech lol