In 1964, 17-year-old Randy Gardner challenged the limits of human endurance by staying awake for 11 days. What began as a scientific fair project, rapidly popped up in a widely published experiment on human endurance and the dangers of sleep deficiency. For the experiment, Gardner fought against sleep, and his two friends, Bruce McAllister and Joe Marciano Jr., monitored him through the clock all day and applied a set of cognitive and physical tests. On day three, the consequences of extreme awake began to show: Problems with the focus, memory lapse and mood swings. “About the fourth or fifth day, I was like – you make me a joke, it’s hard,” Remember Gardner in a Guinness World Records video posted on YouTube. But the attention of the media meant that there was no turning back. The experiment drew the attention of sleep researcher Dr William Dement of Stanford University, which has observed the last three days. Dement, often called the father of sleep science, chased Gardner with the radio and even played flipper to keep him alert. Shockingly, Gardner managed to win. “Physically I had no problems,” Gardner told NPR in a 2017 interview, according to an HT report. He told the news shop that his mental health has a toll. At the end of the 264 hour- it is 11 days and 25 minutes- Gardner experienced paranoia and hallucinations, a clear sign of how badly sleeping can affect the brain. After the experiment, he allegedly slept nearly 15 hours when researchers studied his physiological recovery. Although Gardner eventually returned to a normal sleep pattern, he later revealed suffering to chronic insomnia for years, a condition he linked to the experiment. While Randy Gardner’s record has been exceeded within the same year, his sleepless bill of 11 days remains one of the most studied cases of sleep shortage. The experiment later became the foundation in understanding “microsleeps” – short, involuntary decline in sleep that lasts just a few seconds, as defined by Guinness World Records. Since then, sleep science has developed significantly, with increasing evidence of the long -term cognitive and physiological damage caused by extreme sleep loss. The final Guinness world record for intentional sleep shortage was awarded in 1986 to Robert McDonald, who remained awake for almost 19 days. A decade later, in 1996, the organization officially ceased to accept entries in the category, with the risks that are too dangerous to endorse.
Meet Randy Gardner: The teenager who stayed awake for 11 days reveals the toll it took on his body | Today news
