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What happens to you when you don't sleep? Conditions of Use Your
brain goes woolly, your limbs feel like lead, and the smallest
mishaps make you intensely cranky. But do the ill effects go
deeper than that? Can lack of sleep be enough to kill you? At
least one popular television show has suggested it can. The
scriptwriters on the fictional American TV show House MD went as
far as suggesting death was inevitable after precisely 10 days
without sleep a plot device that reportedly sent insomniacs
across the United States into a flurry of anxiety. So is lost
sleep something to... lose sleep over? Yes and no, says Sydney
sleep researcher Dr Nathaniel Marshall. While sleep is important
to human health, there's no good evidence being sleep deprived
has direct and profoundly deadly effects on your body, he says.
But it can impair your judgement in potentially fatal ways;
going without sleep does increase your risk of death from a
fatal accident. Lack of s