In December 1963/January 1964, 17-year-old Gardner stayed awake for 11 days and 24 minutes (264.4 hours), breaking the previous record of 260 hours held by Tom Rounds. Gardner's record attempt was attended by Stanford sleep researcher Dr. William C. Dement, while his health was monitored by Lt. Cmdr.
How long can you go? The longest recorded time without sleep is approximately 264 hours, or just over 11 consecutive days. Although it's unclear exactly how long humans can survive without sleep, it isn't long before the effects of sleep deprivation start to show.
It ended on 8 January 1964; 17-year-old Randy Gardner had managed to stay awake for 11 days and 25 minutes. Bruce McAllister, one of the high school students who came up with the idea, says it stemmed from the simple need to come up with a science fair project.
The longest time a human being has gone without sleep is 11 days and 25 minutes. The world record was set by … American 17-year-old Randy Gardner in 1963.
The body temperature drops and the immune system gets weaker. If this goes on for too long, there is a good chance that the mind will turn against itself, making a person experience visions and hear phantom sounds akin to a bad acid trip.
Other weird records
Previously, Peter Tripp held the first record at 201 hours and suffered from hallucinations for several days after. Between Peter and Randy, Honolulu DJ Tom Rounds made it to 260 hours. Randy tapped out at 264 hours, and slept for 14 hours straight after.
Gardner appeared to have fully recovered from his loss of sleep, with follow up sleep recordings taken one, six, and ten weeks after the fact showing no significant differences. However, Gardner later reported experiencing serious insomnia decades after his sleep experiment.
Einstein Slept Only 3 Hours a Year.
Li Zhanying, a citizen of China's Henan region, has been suffering from a strange sickness that prevents her from sleeping for even a second. For the past 40 years, the Chinese woman claims she hasn't slept in 40 years.
Elon Musk says he is "fairly nocturnal" and only sleeps about six hours a day. The world's richest man made the comments during an August 5 episode of The Full Send podcast. He said he usually goes to sleep at about 3 a.m. and wakes up after about six hours at 9 a.m. or 9:30 a.m.
Gardner experienced mood swings, memory and attention lapses, loss of coordination, slurred speech and hallucinations, but was otherwise fine. His first sleep after those 11 days lasted just 14 hours.
Perceptual changes rarely make an appearance before 24 h have elapsed. Only after a whole night without sleep do these experiences start making an appearance (Figure 3A). After 48 h of sleep deprivation, perceptual distortions and hallucinations are reliably elicited (87.5% cumulative percentage of studies).
But frequent or prolonged sleep deprivation can cause serious health issues. Lack of sleep can lead to poor cognitive function, increased inflammation, and reduced immune function. If sleep deprivation continues, it may increase your risk for chronic disease.
In October of 2017, Wyatt Shaw from Kentucky fell asleep for 11 days. He was just seven years old and doctors ran several tests with no conclusive explanations.
VEDANTAM: At 2:00 in the morning on January 8th, 1964, Randy broke the world record. He had gone 11 days, 264 hours, without drifting off. There was only one way to celebrate. He was whisked off to a naval hospital where researchers attached electrodes to his head to monitor his brain waves, and he went to sleep.
You can survive on six hours of sleep but that would not be good for your long-term health. Getting less sleep can make you drowsy, which can increase your risk of sleep deprivation and sleep disorders, resulting in falls and road accidents.
According to VietNamNet, TV channels with modern devices have kept track of Thai Ngoc for a long time and they all record that Ngoc has not slept. Thai Ngoc said the insomnia began when he was 20 years old and ten years later he became sleepless.
Symptoms of short sleeper syndrome
People with SSS sleep fewer than six hours each night and are still able to function well throughout the day. They can perform well at work or school despite their short sleep duration. Additionally, they don't feel the need to take naps or sleep more on the weekends.
Al Herpin, who lived in Trenton, New Jersey, claimed to have never slept. The supposed cause is unknown. While claims such as his have occasionally appeared in newspapers, there is a recognized medical consensus that all humans require sleep, and that they do so even if they are not aware of it.
Less sleep lowers IQ scores and grades
According to Coren, scores on intelligence tests decline cumulatively on each successive day that you sleep less than you normally sleep. The daily decline is approximately one IQ point for the first hour of sleep loss, two for the next, and four for the next.
For da Vinci's possible adoption of this practice, Claudio Stampi writes in his 1992 book, "Why We Nap": "One of his secrets, or so it has been claimed, was a unique sleep formula: he would sleep 15 minutes out of every four hours, for a daily total of only 1.5 hours of sleep.
On average, he gets between four and five hours of sleep per night. Want to know how he manages? Keep reading to find out more about Donald Trump's sleep schedule.
On Aug. 6, 1941, 6-year-old Elaine Esposito went to the hospital for a routine appendectomy. She went under general anesthetic and never came out. Dubbed the "sleeping beauty," Esposito stayed in a coma for 37 years and 111 days before succumbing in 1978 — the longest-ever coma, according to Guinness World Records.
The longest someone is known to have gone without water was in the case of Andreas Mihavecz, an 18-year-old Austrian bricklayer who was left locked in a police cell for 18 days in 1979 after the officers on duty forgot about him. His case even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.
To give an answer to the original question, the average person will begin to seriously suffer after only 24-48 hours without sleep. 4-5 days would probably be the limit for most people before their bodies forced themselves into sleeping.