Most of us have a sleepless night every once a while. Your cat dies. The job interview didn't go well. You studied English and then found yourself writing a Math’s paper. We have all been there. And then gone to school, college or work the next day. And that whole day is a blur. Your eyes are red and you can barely keep them open. Then you come back home and crash into your bed, the world goes quiet, and you sleep and everything is back to normal when you open your eyes again.
But, what if you were to keep going? And banned from sleeping? On a gun point maybe? How long would you be able to go? And more importantly, where does the threshold lie? For how long can a human stay awake before they die?
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Nobody Has Gone Past Nineteen
In 1963, a Stanford Sleep researcher, William C. Dement heard about a17 year-old self- described science-nerd Randy Gardner . Randy had not slept for more than 8 days. Not because he couldn't, but because he wanted to break a record. The world record for going without sleep for the longest time. It belonged to professional DJ, Tom Rounds, who had stayed awake for 260 hours (10 days 20 hours) while sitting in a department store window display. Yes, the 50’s and the 60’s didn’t have Instagram, so a lot of free time!
In 1997, Guinness book of world records had to ban the category because of how dangerous it was. All because of one man: Robert McDonald, who went 453 hours 40 minutes (18 days 21 hours 40 minutes) without sleeping.
Nausea, Memory Loss And hallucinations: What Sleep Deprivations Does
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Based on the accounts from various people who have attempted records for going without sleep for the longest time you begin feeling fatigued after not sleeping for around 36. After three days you begin experiencing nausea and extreme anger. Hallucinations follow. You begin losing grip on reality and start behaving inexplicably. After around day 7 you are essentially an Alzheimer's patient and an angry and weak one at that. After 19 days when Robert Mcdonald finally slept, he did so for 15 hours straight. But even, after waking up he was never himself again. He had hallucinations, and later developed insomnia too. In fact most of the record makers had long lasting negative effects. And even though the record is not accepted now, that hasn’t stopped people from trying. Many have. But only in vain. Nobody has managed to cross the Nineteen Day Threshold since, experts suggest “that’s because it cannot be done”. They say perhaps 20 is the longest one can go. But how long before one might die? No one can say for sure.
Conclusion
Sleep is one of the primal urges and necessities of the body and should never be compromised unless necessary. We may never know how long we can go without sleeping but we do know for certain that lack of sleep is linked to a wide range of serious health problems. These include cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and high blood pressure, metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity, and mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. And hence, you should always get those good hours of sleep when you can.