Vietnam man handles three decades without sleep

That's not really an urban legend. There are many hazardous health effects that result from going even a couple days without sleep. "Some guy in Vietnam who hasn't slept in 30 years" is the urban legend. Even if Thanh Nien News were a reliable source, one guy who can't sleep is a scientific abnormality, not an invalidation of billions of people's biological needs.
 
Ijuin said:
So much for the urban legend that people die after several weeks of no sleep.

I thought I read somewhere that you couldn't stay up (naturally) more than 3 days without any kind of sleep.
 
Did anybody bother to check if he was sleeping with his eyes open?

BTW Ptarmigan if you feel the need to sleep at an all-night LANparty then you obviously aren't fighting hard enough. :p
 
This is highly, highly doubtful. Medically, it is pretty much impossible. Most people go psychotic after a few days without sleep. Feel free to Google Scholar studies on sleep deprivation if you want more details.

Now, there are some people who can go into sleep-like states that serve as a sort of substitute for sleep (but not on a long-term basis). If he was doing deep meditation with some sort of REM cycle, it could theoretically be possible (but distinguishing that from a nap would be very difficult).

But, I'm going to say that I don't buy this at all.

Most likely, he is sleeping without realizing it, or he has some sort of condition where he remains attuned to his senses while asleep (there's a lot more to sleep than closing your eyes and "conking out" so to speak). There is no way we can say he is not sleeping unless he has had consecutive sleep studies done on him.

Go figure. Not all investigative journalism was created equal. :)
 
More seriously, I thought the world record for normal people staying awake without simulants was like nineteen days or something.
 
One of my friend's fathers spent 6 months in the hospital learning how to sleep normally again after he spent a week awake. He was hallucinating and spent most of that time in the psych ward. It isn't an 'urban legend'.
 
Halman said:
One of my friend's fathers spent 6 months in the hospital learning how to sleep normally again after he spent a week awake.

Did he do that just for fun? A friends friend had a competition were they were trying to stay awake for as long as possible. He managed 52 hours(I think)... Kinda silly, actually, especially since he was going to school and everything at the same time.
 
No, he was having a lot of job related stress I think. But it very nearly killed him, so I assume it wasn't for fun.
 
Halman said:
No, he was having a lot of job related stress I think. But it very nearly killed him, so I assume it wasn't for fun.

Hehe, people are killed all the time when doing stuff they think is fun. Like those stupid teenagers that get drunk and run across the road in chicken outfits and get hit by trucks.:p
 
They omited the part where he fended off an alien invasion while painting the monalisa and sending it back to the past with a black monolith.
 
I dont think this is an urban legend at all, because this is not the first case documented. The last one I've heard was about a russian (ucranian?) guy who spent 20 years without sleep, but had to be medicated to maintain his fisical condition. Who knows, the human brain is still a mistery...
 
Sphynx said:
This is highly, highly doubtful. Medically, it is pretty much impossible. Most people go psychotic after a few days without sleep. Feel free to Google Scholar studies on sleep deprivation if you want more details.

Psychotic. Would explain my situation. I'm a long-sufferer of insomnia myself. Have been since I was about 12 or 13.

Sphynx said:
Now, there are some people who can go into sleep-like states that serve as a sort of substitute for sleep (but not on a long-term basis). If he was doing deep meditation with some sort of REM cycle, it could theoretically be possible (but distinguishing that from a nap would be very difficult).

But, I'm going to say that I don't buy this at all.

Most likely, he is sleeping without realizing it, or he has some sort of condition where he remains attuned to his senses while asleep (there's a lot more to sleep than closing your eyes and "conking out" so to speak). There is no way we can say he is not sleeping unless he has had consecutive sleep studies done on him.:)

It's very scary; the exhaustion can overtake a person at any time. I've managed to "get by" with two or three days without real "sleep". (Managing a few cat-naps in the internim; none lasting more then four hours.).
Example: one day, I was driving home from work and I "blinked" (Or to me, it felt like blinking.). When I reopened my eyes, I found out that I cleared three miles of Route 98 without knowing it.
What terrifies me? Between those three miles, two stoplights. :eek:


Sphynx said:
Go figure. Not all investigative journalism was created equal. :)

Yeah; I've read that perhaps 20% percent of all research papers are faked or fraudulant. Much like the South Korean stem cell "research". :(
 
I read that a few German doctors trapped in Stalingrad during WW2 started to study the effects of sleep deprivation after troops started dropping off for no apparent reason, they later ascertained that sleep deprivation in conjunction with a poor diet (above starvation level), lousy living conditions and constant stress could actaully kill you outright after a few weeks (as in your functioning adequately one minute then you just drp down dead)
 
TigerNobleHeart said:
Yeah; I've read that perhaps 20% percent of all research papers are faked or fraudulant. Much like the South Korean stem cell "research". :(

Lot of potential irony here. :)
 
Shooter said:
I dont think this is an urban legend at all, because this is not the first case documented. The last one I've heard was about a russian (ucranian?) guy who spent 20 years without sleep, but had to be medicated to maintain his fisical condition. Who knows, the human brain is still a mistery...

I think the key issue here is that you don't know what an "urban legend" is. :)

TigerNobleHeart said:
Yeah; I've read that perhaps 20% percent of all research papers are faked or fraudulant. Much like the South Korean stem cell "research". :(

87% of all statistics, etc, etc.
 
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