24 yr old in an asian cyber cafe did 64 hours on a pc withouht sleep and little food and when he tried to walk off he dropped dead.

[bomekked]

Do insomniacs have shorter lives?

[andy hughes]

The important part of sleep is the 'deep sleep' that occurs in the middle of the sleep cycle - lasting maybe two or three hours. Most people need a couple of hours either side of that time to drop into and out of that time. Insomniacs can drop into that 'deep sleep' more or less instantly, and need just a few hours sleep. All brains need sleep in order to assimilate the stimulii they have had over s specific period of time - failure to allow the brain to do this is dangerous, and if coupled with additional stimulation and deprivation - PC activity and no food, coul result in the overload that caused this fatality. That said, plenty of insomniacs live long and happy lives, and use the additional time to further their lives and careers - a famous example is Margaret Thatcher, still going strong.

[sft42]

I'm not famous but i'm an example. I regularly only get 5 hours sleep a night (maybe once a month i'll sleep for 10 hours) and seem to get on fine with this amount so i don't know if this qualifies me as an insomniac? i think most times the body knows what it needs and will adapt as best it can and as to your question i would doubt the truth of this. I would expect anyone in a sitting position in front of a computer to nod off even if they were on a site as exciting as The Answerbank