#1
Way back 1965, a 16-year-old high school student named, Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 straight days and 24 minutes, that's roughly 264.4 hours straight.
#2
It remains one of the longest documented records for a human intentionally going without sleep using no stimulants, and on the surface Gardner appeared to get through it okay, even beating Sanford University researcher William Dement in a game of pinball on the tenth day. But all was not well with Gardner, as physiological and cognitive tests began to reveal
#3
According to the TED-Ed video, after just two days of zero sleep, Gardner's eyes struggled to remain focused. He showed some signs of ataxia, a condition wherein one is at loss in controlling body movements.
As researcher, John J. Ross of the US Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, who was responsible for monitoring the effects of Gardner's experiment, by day three, he became moody and uncoordinated, and by day five he started hallucinating. From there he experienced trouble concentrating, forming short-term memories, and became paranoid, and irritable. Stanley Coren from thePsychiatric Times details Ross's findings by day 11:
#4
In fact, the effects on Gardner were so dreadful, the Guinness Book of Documents has halted record documents for sleep deprivation that was voluntary whilst to not promote further attempts.
While Gardner ended up recovering from the experiment with no discernible long-term physical and mental defects, the rest of us might not be so lucky. We might not be trying to cut out shut-eye altogether like Gardner did, but a great deal of us are attempting to preserve ourselves on sleep that is less than our systems require, and over many years, the results can be very serious.
#5
From weight gain, high blood pressure and hormone alterations to infection and an elevated risk of premature demise, we all know that the effects of continually finding less than the proposed 7 hours sleep an evening for adults and 10 hours sleep for teenagers aren't fantastic, and as the TED-Ed video studies, in the US, 30% of people, and 66 percent of youngsters are often sleeping-deprived.
#6
So why exactly do we need sleep, and what would happen inside our body that triggers deficiencies in sleep to provide some people a 4.5 times higher-risk of stroke?