Fasting from sleep anyone?

Been wondering if anyone has done "prolonged" sleep fasting or looked into it? It would make sense, that in the same way we are built to handle to go long times without water and food, maybe we can do that with sleep also. I can't imagine we always got out 8ish hours back in the day. Surely there were regular times, when we went without sleep for days. I know it sounds dumb af, but im just wondering.

Answer

I don’t think it’s beneficial. It seems that amyloid plaques are cleared from our brain while we sleep; and that a build up of these plaques is associated with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Sleep is also critical for our ability to convert short term memories into long term memories.

As a parent, I can assure we my spouse and I have gotten significantly dumber when our kids were youngest because sleep was so hard to come by.

Answer

I’ve never done it but apparently it is thought to be helpful for some cases of depression.

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2017/september/sleep-deprivation-is-an-effective-antidepressant-for-nearly-half-of-depressed-patients