Longest period without sleep
Depending on how one defines sleep, there are several persons who
can claim the record for having gone the longest without sleep.
Aside from mere curiosity, these records may prove important to
various sleep theories.
1. Thai Ngoc, born 1942, has stayed awake for 33 years or 11,700
nights, according to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien. [6]
He suffers from no apparent ill effect (other than the fact that he
cannot sleep). Ngoc is mentally sound and able to carry 100kg of
pig feed down a 4km road. He acquired the ability to go without
sleep after a bout of fever in 1973. Some of these health claims
are disputed, however.[7]
2. Randy Gardner holds the Guiness World Record for intentionally
having gone the longest without sleep. In 1965, Gardner, then 18,
stayed awake for 264 hours (about 11 days) for a high school
science project. [8] He experienced significant deficits in
concentration, motivation, perception and other higher mental
processes during his sleep deprivation. However, he recovered
normal cognitive functions after a few nights' sleep.
On May 25th 2007 the BBC reported that Tony Wright beat the Guiness
World Record by staying awake for 11 days and nights. [9] The
Guinness Book of Records has however withdrawn its backing of a
sleep deprivation class because of the associated health
risks.
3. People born with the rare genetic disorder Morvans fibrillary
chorea or Morvans syndrome can go without sleep for several months
at a time. Michel Jouvet and his colleagues in Lyon, France,
studied a 27-year-old man and found he had virtually no sleep over
a period of several months. During that time he did not feel sleepy
or tired and did not show any disorders of mood, memory, or
anxiety. Nevertheless, nearly every night between 9:00 and 11:00
p.m., he experienced a 20 to 60-minute period of auditory, visual,
olfactory, and somesthetic (sense of touch) hallucinations, as well
as pain and vasoconstriction in his fingers and toes.[8] In recent
investigations, Morvan's syndrome has been attributed to serum
antibodies directed against specific potassium (K+) channels in
cell and nerve membranes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Longest_period_without_sleep
