Man Who Did Not Sleep For 11 Days Reveals Its Impact On His Body

A US man who stayed awake for a marathon 264 hours or 11 days has revealed the significant toll the exercise took on him. In 1963, Randy Gardner, then only 17 years old, decided to stay up for a record length of time after making a pact with two of his friends. Determined to break the record, which until then was held by Honolulu DJ Tom Rounds, who went 260 hours without sleeping -- the friends headed to the 10th Annual Greater San Diego Science Fair.

"For years and years, I've just hibernated. I don't know why I agreed to talk," said Mr Gardner in a video posted to the Guinness World Records YouTube account.

Mr Gardner was joined by Bruce McAllister and Joe Marciano Jr, who had the responsibility to keep their friend awake throughout the campaign. They also administered a set of 20 tests every six hours to Mr Gardner to assess his mental state.

Following three days of no sleep, Mr Gardner started experiencing concentration issues and short-term memory loss.

"About the fourth or fifth day, I was like -- are you kidding me, this is hard. By then, it had gotten out to the newspapers and the wire services picked it up and it was too late, I couldn't back out," Mr Gardner said.

With the experiment's popularity soaring, William Dement, a sleep researcher at Stanford University, decided to join the boys for the last three days. Keeping close records of his physical and mental state, Mr Dement, who would later be named the father of sleep science, pushed Mr Gardner to the edge.

He drove the boy around in a car, with the radio on full blast, and challenged him to games of pinball. Surprisingly, Mr Gardner managed to win the match despite having gone ten days without sleep at that point.

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Experiment result

By the end of the experiment, sleep deprivation had taken a massive toll on Mr Gardner's cognitive ability. He reportedly experienced moodiness, concentration issues and short-term memory loss, as well as paranoia and even hallucinations.

After breaking the record, Mr Gardner slept for 14 hours and 45 minutes with Dr Dement and his team analysing his brain waves, heart rate, blood pressure and other physiological markers. While the teen initially managed to return to a normal sleep schedule, Mr Gardner later revealed that he suffered from decades of unbearable insomnia. He blamed it all on his long bout without sleep as a teen.

The record has since been broken multiple times. However, in 1997, the Guinness World Records stopped accepting new attempts for safety reasons.