We've talked before about the importance of sleep and just how much you should try and get every night, but we haven't seen what it would be like if you didn't sleep at all.

Obviously, please don't try this.

It's just hypothetical.

Ahhh!

...uh…

Where am I and why am I so pointy!?

Animator, that is not fair! Why does he get a face!?

Hey, aren't you Block Man from...uh...Life Nugget?

Close enough. I guess. Who are you?

I'm James from TheOdd1sOut

Oh yeah! I know you!

You're normally a lot rounder.

But now, I'm looking sharp!

Ayyyy!

So, I don't know if you're busy after crashing through a giant portal in the sky, but do you wanna help me with this video?

Sure! What's it about?

Oh, it's on what would happen if you didn't sleep for a week!

Oh yeah, I can definitely help with this one.

So, going without sleep for a week does sound like a long time, but you wouldn't win any awards for doing it.

There has actually been an extensively documented case of someone stayed awake for about 11 days, or nearly 265 hours.

This came from Randy Garner, a high school student in San Diego, California.

There have been other reports since then of people staying awake even longer, but Garner gave a well-recorded history on the upper limits of the human body.

He did it as part of an experiment for his science fair, breaking Tom Rounds' previous record of 260 hours.

All that for a science fair?

I would have just stuck with the baking soda volcano ...or you know, literally anything else!

But what might happen to you if you stayed up for a week?

After your first night awake, you might get lost in your video games until the sun surprises you through your window.

This is because even 24 hours without sleep can lead to an altered sense of time and a sensitivity to light and brightness.

As you progress into your sleepless week, you'll most likely notice your emotions going a bit wonky.

You may not feel as positive and be easily irritated or disappointed.

You could also experience memory issues and have trouble staying alert.

Losing sleep can also weaken the body's ability to fend off illnesses.

You shouldn't be operating any machinery either because your chances of getting into an accident are heavily increased.

Some have even said staying up for extended periods of time have caused them to have hallucinations, but there's still a bit of skepticism on this.

Oh that's not a hallucination.

Sometimes that just happens.

Beyond, ya know, just choosing to do so, there's also medical conditions that make it difficult for people to get to sleep, and they can be pretty serious.

One of these is called exploding head syndrome.

It's not actually as cool as it sounds; it's so much worse.

It's where a person experiences extremely loud noises, like an explosion or a booming thunderclap, as they're drifting off to sleep or waking up.

People dealing with high levels of stress and mental or physical fatigue seem to be more likely to have exploding head syndrome.

It can truly be terrifying and really interfere with their sleep.

Exploding heads, good for cartoons... not for people.

Another condition is called fatal familial insomnia, where patients have symptoms such as progressive insomnia, weight loss, extreme body temperatures, and rapidly progressing dementia.

There's currently no effective treatment or cure for it, and death typically occurs within 12-18 months of a person's first symptoms.

But that doesn't mean we're not trying to learn more about it.

A recent study of 5 patients used SPECT and PET scans to reveal that basal ganglia and the cerebral cortex were also affected by fatal familial insomnia.

This is important because, based off of a previous study, it was found that basal ganglia are important in regulating sleep-wake behaviors.

Hopefully, with further research, we can better learn how to care for this dangerous disease and one day find a cure.

Serious conditions aside, sleep deprivation doesn't seem to always be a bad thing though.

Not encouraging staying up all night and playing video games though.

But based on a recent study, sleep deprivation might be an effective antidepressant, as it rapidly reduced symptoms of depression in roughly half of the depression patients in the analysis.

Their results are really quite interesting.

But all in all, I'd say that sleep is pretty darn important and you should try your best to keep that brain of yours well-rested, at least in most cases.

Sometimes you just gotta stay up and finish that YouTube video.

Rather than trying to see how long you can stay awake, it would be way cooler if we tried to beat the world record for the largest sleepover party.

It's only 2,004 people!

If more people fall through that giant portal thing then we can probably beat that record.

Actually never mind.

Let's get out of here.

Why!? It looks so friendly!

Who's a good fish monster!?

So how long have you stayed up for? Let me know in the comment section below!

Thank you so much to James from TheOdd1sOut for helping me with this video!

He's incredibly talented and makes amazing animated stories over on his channel.

Go check him out and subscribe!

As always, I'm Blocko and this has been Life Noggin.

Don't forget to keep on thinking!

Sweet dreams.