Long term effects of all-nighters

[deft]

Started writing a post, but inb4 tl;dr so:

I pull all-nighters a lot, sometimes 2-3 times a week. I was wondering if anyone knows of any long-term negative effects of this. I tried searching around but all I could find was "Tips for pulling all-nighters" and such, which made me laugh.

Anyone have this habit and/or know anything I should know? I can do them without loads of caffeine and sugar and whatnot, so that's not really an issue.

[Headspace]

I do them every other saturday night (have to work at 5am Sunday, so I usually don't go to sleep). During finals week last year I did it a lot, and I had a hard time getting back on a good sleep pattern, and even when I did, I would sleep for 10-12 hours a day, even when I wasn't trying.

[Titanss]

I kinda wonder about this too.. i can't imagine it does anything long term tho

[Lyn]

Sometimes your diet can change (eat less, eat more, eat crap food).

[deft]

I do them every other saturday night (have to work at 5am Sunday, so I usually don't go to sleep).

Yeah this is pretty much it for me too, except it will be like 2am and I have class at 8am and I just SUCK at waking up (motivation or physical problem, idk) so I just say screw it and stay up until class.

[Ohaigaiz]

i have chronic migranes from sitting in front of a very big, very bright monitor for so long. which, they only occur after i've been sitting in front of said monitor for around 8 hours.

the only thing i can foresee is insomnia? even so i highly doubt you can just 'catch' that from pulling all nighters. in fact, i used to have insomnia but staying up until the point of absolute exhaustion actually rid them of me for the most part. i am usually awake around 12-15 hours and sleep for the same amount of time.

[Woozie]

If you have to do overnighters that often, you're taking way too many classes/too hard classes. You should be pulling them like once every other week or something. (or maybe my classes are just way too easy? I'm a huge procrastinator yet I still don't have to pull all nighters more than maybe once every two weeks at most unless you count the all nighters I pull as a direct result of my research, but even then it's not 2~3 times per week)

But to answer your question: I don't know how to answer your question. I've never heard of long term effects of these. I'm sure you're aware of the long term effects of too little sleep, but this obviously isn't the same thing.

[deft]

If you have to do overnighters that often, you're taking way too many classes/too hard classes. You should be pulling them like once every other week or something. (or maybe my classes are just way too easy? I'm a huge procrastinator yet I still don't have to pull all nighters more than maybe once every two weeks at most)

It's not so much studying, it's just not having any desire to sleep until 4am-ish

But to answer your question: I don't know how to answer your question. I've never heard of long term effects of these. I'm sure you're aware of the long term effects of too little sleep, but this obviously isn't the same thing.

I'm actually not really familiar with these. Go on if you will.

[Seanr]

Eventually sleep will catch up with you. I have f'd up sleeping habits from when i was little. I'm a nighthawk and hate to go to sleep at times. You will start to want to fall asleep in the middle of the day times often or just way earlier than your used to.

[Z.Z.]

I've found that my apatite tends to be completely shot when staying up all night constantly. I've also noticed that I'll tend to sleep for about 10-14 hours when I finally get to sleep.

[Woozie]

It's not so much studying, it's just not having any desire to sleep until 4am-ish



I'm actually not really familiar with these. Go on if you will.

Getting hardly any sleep for a long (consecutive) time period causes cortisol levels to rise (stress hormone), and it also causes decrease in certain brain functions like memory, speech, focus, etc. It can also affect certain body functions (e.g. your blood pressure will rise). I'm sure you can find a better explanation of the effects by google or something, but those are the symptoms I'm aware of.

But this only applies to long consecutive time periods with little (or none) sleep. Not to someone who goes a day without sleep and then gets a full night of rest. So these probably don't apply to people who pulls all nighters.

[Mayareira]

You are probably in your 20s so....Nothing serious really. Watch what you eat, exercise regularly and you'll be fine.

[Lucavi]

I've done em all my life, and at least once a weekend. I haven't felt any long-term effects. I'd say diet has more to do with how your feeling and your general health than staying up. What you do while staying up probably matters more too. Staying up to booze or shoot up is far fucking worse than staying up with the boys over a LAN party or camping some HNM.

[deft]

Lol. Yeah it's more like staying up playing video games. I think the deeper roots here are a pretty bad addiction to video games >.> Every since I discovered online multiplayer games: FPS or MMO, w/e. I can't get enough of that shit.

I was kind of hoping that there were some negatives to them, but oh well. I do eat pretty well. I don't exercise much, but I have to walk around a lot for classes/work.

[Woozie]

Some google searches doesn't seem to show any long term effects of all nighters (though they do show the short term effects).

I would search through journals, but I don't know how to say "all nighter" in scientific language, so unless they actually use the word "all nighter" and not some other word or phrase that means the same thing, I wont be able to find it.

[deft]

Haha, yeah that's a tough one. Thanks for trying though. I'm just making sure I'm not fucking up something important- brains/nerves/etc.

[MisterBob]

You're not causing much damage. However, increased stress from these can make you more prone to illness, and frequent stress has long-term obvious health detriments.

[Woozie]

Well if House said it, it must be true.

You should post more in BG-medical threads more often with that avatar.

[Yuri-G]

You're pretty much increasing your risks for all sorts of things - cancer, heart problems, illness due to decreased immune function, you name it - but to what degree, I don't know. I doubt that you're doing any serious long-term damage, but it's definitely a bad habit to be in health-wise.

[Diamicles]

Any sleep deprivation can disrupt your natural circadian rhythm, the side effect of which can vary in intensity and in symptoms.

Decent info on the CR on wiki, good starting point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm