Which is worse, hunger or sleep deprivation?

[Jake55778]

Which do you think you could go longer without, food or sleep?

No reason for this, I was just bored.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Being hungry is irritating, but being sleepy changes moods entirely for me.

[LS13]

Definitely sleep deprivation is worse. Same reason as lord, it completely changes ur attitude and personality.

[Rock Beefchest]

Hunger by far, it will kill you quicker, though both can be deadly.

[J4Numbers]

Hunger.
But then again, I'm nocturnal.
Also, I can go without food for a while if I forget to eat (Which happens fairly regularly), so it's a close run thing for me.

[welwyn]

Sleep deprivation puts me in a much worse mood than hunger. But then again when I was 18-24 I would go periods of not eating for 2-3 weeks due to depression, so hunger isnt that bad for me.

[Wildwill002]

Sleep deprivation can kill you but after an extremely long amount of time (I recall my sister saying something like a year-ish) and I'm kinda used to being hungry since I've been ill several times in my life which forced me to be unable to eat for several days.

[Jake55778]

I'd be curious to see a reliable source for that. Wikipedia says the longest documented case of someone staying awake was 12 days, but also lists people who claim they've gone without sleep for decades.

[welwyn]

Sleep itself isnt important, its the resting thats important. It's possible to put your brain in an alert yet switched off state enough to rest in, but not be asleep.

[DuplicateValue]

Well, sort of. I think there's only a short period of necessary ("deep" I guess) sleep in a night. The rest is for growth and repair.

And yeah, sleep for me too. Though that doesn't tend to stop me from being up later than I can afford to. Hunger also tends to carry a slight sense of accomplishment for some reason. And I'm used to it, since I to skip meals a lot by accident.

[Sti_Jo_Lew]

I have a stupidly fast metabolism and hunger gives me severe headaches. I'd rather go 3 days without sleep than 1 day without food.

[LS13]

Now that I think of it, it really does depend on the person. For example, if I had to I could go pretty long without food cause of my average metabolism (average for people in general, not teenagers), but if I don't sleep I get really weird. Compare that to one of my friends who has insomnia, an insanely fast metabolism, and poor circulation so if she doesn't eat she gets ridiculously cold but she can go days without sleep with little to no effect.

[steveab]

You can survive longer without food that sleep, the actual likely claims range from between 8-16 days without sleep, but if you sleep before you finally collapse, then you will recover to a state of almost total normality in about 18 hours. However if you start eating again after fasting for that long you will not recover nearly so quickly, you will have metabolised most/all of your adipose tissue and you will have severe muscle wastage, this will take weeks or months to reverse.
The cause of death through lack of sleep has been established to be a severe weakening of the immune system and your body's ability to effectively regulate blood glucose and other basic homeostatic functions.

[Wildwill002]

There was a scientist guy once, forgotten his name, that trained himself to have a quick 30 second nap whenever he felt sleepy.

[LS13]

The cause of death through lack of sleep has been established to be a severe weakening of the immune system and your body's ability to effectively regulate blood glucose and other basic homeostatic functions.

I've actually experienced this many, many times whenever I get close to opening week of a production I'm in. Everyone starts getting sick due to lack of sleep, it is really annoying.