How many hours can a person hold out without sleep? Think about the moment when you take a warm shower, put on your pyjamas and lie down in your comfortable bed after a stressful and exhausting day. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Of course, we all know that sleep is one of our basic needs and helps us to regenerate our brains and bodies...
Well, think of a day when you were sleepless for some reason. You had difficulties keeping your eyelids open during the day, you became sluggish, you couldn't fully concentrate on anything you did, and you probably noticed that you were more sensitive than on normal days. If you consider all these physical and spiritual signals given by your body when you only spend a single day sleepless, how many hours do you think you can hold out without sleeping at all?
You watching this video probably means, that you've thought about the answer to this question before, just like Standford sleep researcher Dr. William C. Dement. The most famous sleep deprivation study to date took place in 1964, when 18-year-old Randy Gardner agreed to be part of this experiment. I can imagine that you are wondering about the outcome of such an experiment, but 'keep in mind' that long-term sleeplessness is a danger to human health, both physically and mentally, which is why even the Guinees Book of World Records does not deal with this issue, so please don't try this at home!
So let's get back to the experiment... Day after day the researchers recorded Randy's condition and gave him all the support he needed. On the second sleepless day he already had difficulties speaking and after the third day they found out that he lost his ability to identify objects by touching them. He soon became oversensitive to smells, but was so determined to continue that he focused on physical activities to avoid falling asleep. After the sixth day, he began to have paranoid thoughts and hallucinations.
By the end of the first week of sleeplessness, the physical effects had increased so that he could only eat with help. On the ninth day he experienced a loss of his short-term memory, whereupon the researchers wanted to stop the experiment, but Randy did not give up. At the end of the tenth day he couldn't remember people and their names.
According to the information provided to Psychiatric Times, the professors involved in the study asked Randy to count down from 100 in 7-steps when he entered the eleventh day, but when Randy finished the process 5 times and was asked why he stopped, he answered that he had forgotten what he was doing. When the experiment was finished, Randy had spent 11 days and 24 minutes, exactly 264 hours without sleep.
Although Randy showed very useful results about the symptoms of sleeplessness, some years after the experiment some problems began to appear. Randy's 8-hour sleep time decreased from day to day, and when he was in his 50s, he spent the rest of his life with the chronic condition of insomnia, the syndrome of sleeplessness. After voluntarily participating at such an experiment and pushing his own physical limits, he was no longer able to sleep, even if he wanted to. (yawn) Talking about sleep makes me really tired. What about you? 'Keep in mind' to like this video and hit the subscribe button, if you'd like to see more of our videos. Now it's nap time, sleep well.
0 Comments