Going without sleep for a few hours is the reality of many people. Some change the night for the day, others sleep less to be able to fulfill their responsibilities. There are also those who spend sleepless nights watching the best movies and series, although we bear in mind that the sleep deprivation it is not healthy for the body.
Sleep deprivation, when it lasts for many days, is capable of causing damage to health. You can notice, even if slowly, the mood changing, the reasoning slower and slower, among other difficulties that arise. A 17-year-old teenager did something that shouldn't even have been considered.
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In 1964, when he was just 17 years old, Randy Gardner decided to pursue a science project with his childhood friend. Both teenagers decided that they would go days without sleep in order to enter the world record for people who went without sleep.
That year, the record was 11 days and, more specifically, 260 exact hours without sleep. The main objective of the two teenagers was to know the effects that sleep deprivation could cause. They chose that the test would be done between the two, so they drew a name to be the guinea pig for the experiment.
Between Gardner and MacAllister, Gardner was the lucky one to try to stay awake. A Stanford sleep researcher known as William Dement accompanied the two teenagers to study the case.
During the study, Gardner demonstrated that his mood was out of the ordinary, he no longer had the strength to concentrate, he forgot everything easily, he became hallucinated and paranoid. According to the report, he even forgot his own name.
In an image exam, the boy's brain looked like it was taking brief "naps" while other parts of the organ were awake. As expected, he managed to go 264 hours without sleep. After the experiment, he said he spent years of his life with severe insomnia and couldn't sleep.
Today, the record has been broken and surpassed, reaching 453 hours without sleep, the equivalent of 19 days. The current record belongs to Robert McDonald, although it is no longer a reason for research for causing harm to health.
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