user: I have been staying up incredibly late and not getting enough sleep every single night, but I am still surviving. What damage am I doing to myself by staying up too late and not getting enough sleep?

assistant: Purposely depriving yourself of sleep is a terrible thing to do. Please take care of yourself. Your life will be much better if you do. Having too little sleep can be just as harmful as mal-nutrition, and in some cases worse.

If you don't get enough sleep you may suffer from many problems, some being trivial and some being a matter of life and death. Without enough rest, you may become drowsy and very slow. Your judgment becomes impaired and your mental health may suffer. You may become moody and emotional. Depression and a general loss of interest in life and activities may begin to emerge. Extended periods of time without sleep have more severe consequences. You may begin to hallucinate and have major errors with your perception of reality from the toxins that gradually build up in your brain. These toxins are normally removed during sleep. They can distort your consciousness and produce a harmful and delirious state. Over time, your body will begin to break down internally from lack of repair. Your immune system becomes weaker and weaker and you become more susceptible to illness and disease. Without restorative sleep, your body may take on an unflattering appearance and you may suffer from undesired weight gain. You need your beauty sleep. 

The waking activities of the body and mind are temporarily shutdown to limit their ability to interfere with the vital functions that occur while you sleep. Your body  conserve energy while you rest and your body has an undisturbed period of time to grow, synthesize proteins, heal and repair damaged or strained tissues. Humans and many animals often need to pass the time when it is dark and keep silent and still in a safe place until the safety and warmth of sunlight emerges at dawn.

Without enough sleep you will fail to properly retain memories. You will also fail to maintain your body. Two important phases of sleep are REM sleep and deep sleep. 

During REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, your eyes move around sporadically with your eyelids closed. This is the period of sleep most likely to produce dreams. It is an important period in the sleep cycle where your brain consolidates the experiences and memories from your waking life and encodes them for long-term storage and retrieval. Without enough time spent in this period you will fail to remember things you learned during your waking hours.

Deep sleep is a period of non-REM sleep in which cerebrospinal fluid can freely flow throughout the brain and flush out toxins that typically build up in the brain overtime. This is another reason you may feel refreshed and revitalized upon waking. Those harmful toxins previously holding you back will have been removed. Your body has a chance to heal and regrow tissues, build bone and muscle, and strengthening your immune system.

In summary, the consequences of insufficient sleep are:

1. Poor judgement- Sleep deprived individuals may perform physical tasks with less coordination. Like being under the influence of drugs and alcohol, sleep deprivation can impair your judgement in a way that you might not even notice.
2. Drowsiness- Drowsiness can be extremely dangerous and even fatal for sleep deprived individuals and those around them if they are to operate heavy machinery, equipment, tools, or drive a vehicle, for example.
3. Sleep Inertia- When you wake up but your body wants to stay in bed and continue to sleep, you are experience sleep inertia. As the name suggests, your body wants to continue resting as if you have momentum built up, and if you have not had enough sleep, it will be more intense.
4. Mood- Failing to get enough rest may trigger aggressive, negative, and hostile moods as your brain is attempting to gain control or dominance of your environment so it can manage homeostasis. Homeostasis is a biological subroutine that maintains biological conditions properly in a manner most conducive to your own survival.
5. Mental Health- Without proper rest it is much more difficult to find satisfaction in life. If you feel that you want to give up and quit something you know is important to you, it may be from exhaustion and overall dis-satisfaction with how you feel. These things can be influenced by whether you are well rested or not.
6. Delayed reaction times, slow down in cognitive faculties - Not sleeping enough can temporarily retard your mental abilities.
7. Insufficient Protein Synthesis- when you sleep, your body repairs and heals itself. It does this by synthesizing necessary proteins to keep your cells and tissue in an optimal state. If you have exercised or lifted weights during your waking hours, your body has a chance to build muscles during deep sleep.
8. Sleep Debt - it is recommended that you get at least 7-9 hours of sleep every night. If you fail to get that much sleep, your body will develop a sleep debt for the hours you missed. Your body will benefit if you sleep extra on subsequent nights until the sleep debt is repaid.
9. Depression and Insanity - if sleep deprivation is taken to an extreme more serious mental problems could develop.
10. Loss of interest in life and activities
11. Difficulty maintaining alertness
12. Weight gain
13. Weakened immune system

While it is true that you may become frustrated, aggressive, emotional, moody, depressed or insane with extreme sleep deprivation, you have the power to control how you want to be. You have the power to train yourself and choose what you do instead of passively reacting to your biological drives. Take control of your life. I encourage you to evolve beyond being a helpless slave to your biological drives. Cease to be a robot my good human. Overcome your biological programming and know true freedom. Most importantly, please take care of yourself!