Folks, we are all going to die. Live life well, make sensible decisions, eat well, get outside, exercise, socialize. The rest is noise. Do you want to be min-maxing every facet of your life?
This is a systemic issue. Society needs to learn that mental health needs to be the #1 priority. From there, people will prosper in many ways.
Sleep Deprivation over extended time periods negatively affects all of the above.
From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19961/
The public health consequences of sleep loss and sleep-related disorders are far from benign. The most visible consequences are errors in judgment contributing to disastrous events such as the space shuttle Challenger (Walsh et al., 2005). Less visible consequences of sleep conditions are far more prevalent, and they take a toll on nearly every key indicator of public health: mortality, morbidity, performance, accidents and injuries, functioning and quality of life, family well-being, and health care utilization. Some of these consequences, such as automobile crashes, occur acutely within hours (or minutes) of the sleep disorder, and thus are relatively easy to link to sleep problems. Others—for example, obesity and hypertension—develop more insidiously over months and years of chronic sleep problems. After decades of research, the case can be confidently made that sleep loss and sleep disorders have profound and widespread effects on human health.
Also see https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep-deprivation/effects-...
Nobody with sleep deprivation is doing this.
I've been sleeping less than 6-7h consistently for the past few weeks, and if that'll cause permanent damage to my brain/memory, I absolutely want to prioritize a fix more urgently.
I generally proscribe to satisficing, and wouldn't want to freak out if I missed 30-60min here or there, especially if I still pretty fine, but I value my faculties.
To me, it's like torture, I don't really need additional long-term risks to absolutely not want to do it.
Maybe just because I've been so busy/energized, maybe because I've been doing yoga every morning and exercising during the days, maybe something else.