Have you ever wondered what would happen if you didn’t sleep? According to WebMD, the side-effects can be: “decreased performance and alertness, memory and cognitive impairment, stress in relationships, poor quality of life [you feel detached and outside the rest of the world], occupational injury, automobile injury.” Clinically, WebMD attributes this list of wonderfully dire side effects that could emanate from too long away from slumberland: “high blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, obesity, psychiatric problems including depression and other mood orders, ADD, mental impairment, fetal and childhood growth retardation, injury from accidents, disruption of bed partner’s sleep quality, and [again] poor quality of life.” But is this really true? How far have people gone in pushing the limits of sleep and sleep deprivation? Let us explore.

It turns out that there are a couple of people that have gone for the world record of sleeplessness. The person that occurs the most on google searches is a San-Diego based teenager (at the time) from 1964 by the name of Randy Gardner. He went eleven days without sleep. But, if you look at the English news, the man of many sleepless nights is Tony Wright. Both of these cases underwent very stringent recording processes in an attempt to prove that the person was awake for that entire duration. This seems to be the biggest issue; is the person really awake the whole time. In particular, Tony Wright says some pretty nutty things when it comes to describing how his process of avoiding the sandman took place. A BBC article paraphrases him describing his technique: “He argues that parts of the human brain require a different amount of sleep and it is possible to stay awake and remain functional for long periods.” It is quite possible that he is on to something in that process. The brain may be able to switch to different sides in order to carry out different processes without disturbing other areas of the brain which can then “rest.” There is a fantastic article here from 60 minutes that is really long, but it carries with it a lot of what modern science believes about sleep. Ultimately, the bottom line is that modern science believes that sleep is essential. So let’s go wreck that belief.

There appear to be a couple of encounters throughout history in which people tend to get tremendous amounts of work done by somehow avoiding sleep all together or minimizing it to really, ridiculously low levels. The first case that I was able to trudge up comes from none other than Roger Ebert’s journal. Apparently, when Ebert was out touring the French countryside, he ran across a man whom he discovered did not need to sleep. He was a machinist (and clockmaker and god knows what else), and he considered sleep to be a secondary death that was performed daily. He writes about his experience (or someone republishes it for him) in this link right here. Though he denied sleeping “not a wink,” his daughter has an addition that is attached to the story that describes his sleeping habits as spastic and at most lasting fifteen minutes perhaps twice a day. Still, half an hour of sleep a day is quite an extraordinary feat if this story is true.

Another story that comes up is from a Vietnamese man named Thai Ngoc, who has apprently not slept for 33 years. He had a fever at one point and now, he does not sleep at all. He claims that he is still healthy (after all he is now 64) and he is still able to heft two 50 kg. bags down 4 kilometers of road (!?) If this is true, this is quite possibly the most bad-ass farmer dude that ever walked around. The unfortunate part is that the man seems to really resent the fact that he can not get even the slightest bit of sleep. He is a poor farmer, so I can’t really imagine that he has an X-Box to keep him busy at night, or anything of the ilk. But the case is interesting in that a fever appears to be the cause of his lack of sleep. Now, I am stretching quite a bit here, but is it possible that some microbe when correctly combined with human DNA awakens the ability in a person to overcome sleep? If so, would it be worth harvesting? Incorporating? Could you all use several extra hour’s productivity? Or would work forces then just make the word day 16 hours long? Questions for contemplation, I suppose.

Leonardo DiVinci is a person that apprently slept a total of two hours a night. He was alleged to take fifteen to twenty minute cat naps (or power naps to some) every four hours he was awake or so. Also in that line of sleep patterns are Thomas Edison, Thomas Jefferson, and Nikola Tesla. Now, these are commonly accepted work-a-holics, and the doubt that I can cast on their credibility lies solely in the fact that this information comes from journals that benefit with the promotion of a tireless American work-ethic. Other than that, they may in deed be very true. The missing detail in these men is how they were able to achieve this effect. The Vietnamese guy at least underwent a fever that seems to have transformed him. Were the above men effected by the same virus? Did they share the symptoms of the same disease? They were both reputed to follow a similar sleep regiment. Some ancient Kung-Fu and modern Tai’Chi practiconers were said to be able to get away with as little as two two-hour naps during the evening and early morning. It is also possible that they were able to achieve a sleep like state without administering any outward sign which scientists call “microsleeping.” In other words, it is possible that while you were blathering to them about something important, they were dozing and dreaming in a very short space. So what is the verdict? Why is it that some people need to get sleep or else suffer dire consequences and some people crave sleep but do not need it at all? From the information I am picking up, it seems that it is a combination of genetics and biology. There does seem to be some group of people that try different sleep schedules to boost certain performances. But ultimately, I still feel that the amount of sleep we need is specific to an individual.

Rare photo MR Wolf caught workin on his next blog. He only comes out when his host sleeps.

Mr. Wolf helped out last week. I was worried about what would get posted as I didn’t know if we could have another rant twice in one week. Our heads could have exploded. Instead he went all Geek on it and posted a really cool blog. So thanks to you sir.

This week it is all about sleep. We here at Semantink do not seem to get this anymore. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that keep us going through the night and into the early morning hours. While staying up late for our generation is not unusual, I started to wonder how much sleep do we actually need?

The most common accepted hours of sleep one should get is 8 to 9 hours. I read somewhere that 7 would be the optimal but really I think it comes down to the individual. I personally would love to get 9 hours of sleep. Sleeping, while dearly missed, is more like an enemy trying to keep you from getting the things you need to get done. I say enemy because the US government treats it as such. They have done many studies on sleep. They would love to make it so soldiers could stay awake indefinitely without any side effects.  The Military has released many of their studies to the public. In some of these studies just good ole caffeine was used to keep troops awake. Apparently, while not officially endorsing energy supplements, there are many different kinds of energy products to be had on base. One military paper called “Facilitation of Task Performance and Removal of the Effects of Sleep Deprivation by an Ampakine (CX717) in Nonhuman Primates” found some interesting results. The results showed that monkeys kept awake and given Ampakine were faster and more alert than monkeys who were allowed to sleep.

This war with the enemy sleep is why there is such a big industry developing things to keep you awake. You have Coffee, tea, 5hour energy, Red Bull, Monster Energy, and Orexin A to name a very small few.  Your probably asking yourself what the hell is Orexin A. Well I’ll tell you. There is a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, named Jerome Siegel, that found an interesting way to keep us awake. If what he has figured out is released to the general population we will all be snorting a spray to stay awake (that should be the tagline : Spray Awake). Apparently we lose Orexin A during the day. The loss of this chemical makes us tired. Narcoleptics don’t seem to produce much of this stuff. Jerome Siegel made pure Orexin A into a spray that you should snort through your nose. This will wake you right up and without any side effects because your body would have produced the same stuff anyways.

I look creepily into your eyes as I spray awake

However the best way to finally beat the sleep is to catch a fever. Yeah that’s right if you catch this specific kind of fever you might never sleep again. Don’t believe me well then I would like to introduce you to Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc. This guy has not slep in 33 years. My eyes bugged out when I read this. I was like BS he had to of taken a nap sometime. No he hasn’t because he tried and just couldn’t sleep. Thai Ngoc caught a fever in 1973 and since then has been unable to sleep. Not even drinking makes this guy pass out. He uses his new ability to work on his farm. Maybe Batman found this fever because how would he have time to sleep when fighting all night and then acting like nothing happened the next morning.

I’m going to just stick with my 5 min energy routine. You can watch it below. Oh man this helps me relieve my built up toxins of stress. Just make sure your home alone when your Three thumping in your Wayne Cook Posture. Until next weeks geek