我想不出任何充分的理由，为什么有人会自愿入睡并剥夺小睡带来的快乐。但是话又说回来，人们做了一些极端的事情来创造世界纪录，而兰迪·加德纳（Randy Gardner）就是其中之一。
1963年，这位美国少年创下了世界纪录，因为它是第一个不睡觉的人11天25分钟（谈论所有错过的睡眠机会），此后，不同的人提出了许多殴打的说法the record which include Finland’s Toimi Soini and UK’s Maureen Weston and Tony Wright but none of those cases were observed properly to justify the authenticity of the claims. Gardner’s record was observed by the infamous “father of sleep science” William Dement himself so there wasn’t any room for ambiguities.
缺乏睡眠会对人类产生不利影响，从烦躁，认知僵化到高血压，记忆力丧失甚至幻觉。在不利的情况下，患有罕见的遗传性疾病的人被称为致命的家族性失眠，无法入睡，可能会在三个月内死亡。我们都知道，在整夜学习后，我们会感到有多筋疲力尽，这只是不睡8或12个小时。想象一下，连续264小时保持清醒状态，而无需服用任何刺激性药物来摆脱睡眠，并让周围的人分散注意力和大喊大叫，以免入睡。Yeah, that doesn’t sound very soothing at all…But that’s exactly what Gardner had to go through to set the record and as Dement noted that Gardner experienced many of the side-effects that came from lack of sleep including impairment of his cognitive and sensory abilities and of course lots and lots of irritability (we don’t blame him). After the experiment, Gardner slept for 14 hours straight before waking up to use the bathroom. Hopefully, he was able to sleep some more after that because he deserved it.
While Gardner’s record is the longest anyone has attempted to go without sleep, scientists still don’t know the exact number of hours a human can survive without getting any sleep as our brain goes into ‘microsleep mode’, sleeping for mere seconds even with your eyes open and if it’s possible to die trying.
