In 1965, an American high school student named Randy Gardner conducted an experiment where he stayed awake for 264 hours or 11 days.

By day two, his eyes were incapable of staying focused. He then lost the ability to identify objects by touching them. The third day saw Gardner being temperamental and clumsy.

By the time the experiment ended, he was incapable of concentrating, had short-term memory loss, paranoia and hallucinations.

While Gardner did safely recover, sleep deprivation has historically resulted in hormonal imbalance, sickness and even death.

During sleep, your body repairs and recharges

It is a known medical fact that adults require about seven to eight hours of sleep while teenagers and children need around ten.

The reason you feel sleepy is firstly because your body is signalling your brain that you’re tired and secondly because of the darkening skies outside.

Sleep-inducing chemicals, namely adenosine and melatonin, begin to make you doze off, slowing down your breathing and heart rate and relaxing your muscles.

During sleep, your DNA undergoes repair and your body replenishes for the next day.

According to the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, a study on Malaysians showed that 33% of respondents between the ages of 30 to 70 showed insomnia symptoms, similar to global statistics.

Sleep deprivation affects your learning, memory, mood and reaction time as well as possibly causes inflammation, hallucinations and high blood pressure.

There are also studies that link sleep deprivation to diabetes and obesity.

There are news reports of people dying of stroke after staying awake for long hours.

Studies find that frequently getting less than six hours of sleep per night increases your chances of suffering a stroke by 4.5 times.

There is an unfortunate group of people who suffer a rare inherited genetic mutation called Fatal Familial Insomnia that causes sleeplessness.

This condition disables people from falling asleep at all, and the condition keeps worsening until it causes dementia and death.

So why is it that being sleep deprived causes so much damage to your health? Scientists believe that it is due to waste product accumulation in your brain.

When you are awake, your cells exhaust your energy, which produces by-products including adenosine.

With the increase of adenosine the need for sleep, also called sleep pressure, increases.

Caffeine temporarily suppresses the need for sleep by blocking adenosine from reaching its receptors in the body.

Waste products build up in the brain and if left uncleared, they overload the brain.

So what happens when you are asleep?

Scientists have noticed that the glymphatic system, which is more active when you’re asleep, cleans up the brain by washing the waste products away with cerebrospinal fluid.

Lymphatic vessels, which transport immune cells, have been found in the brain and may be involved in this clean-up process.

As scientists continue their research into sleep, it is more than certain that getting your nightly sleep is vital to stay healthy and mentally capable.