From:
http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/2007/05/29/staying-awake-for-266-hours/
This man, 43-year-old Tony Wright, just concluded an incredible experiment. After staying awake for 11 straight days, he finally went to sleep — ten hours shy of the world record for sleep deprivation. From the Times Online:
“As far as we are concerned our main concern was not the record but to show that Tony could train his mind in such a way as to stay awake for 11 days and remain coherent and aware of what was going on around him. That was the main object and I believe what he has done will surprise many scientists who did not believe it was possible. Tony not only stayed awake but handled ten media interviews a day.”
Before going to sleep, Mr Wright attributed his success to the “caveman diet” of raw food he followed during his marathon. Instead of celebrating afterwards, he climbed into bed at 8am having tested his own theory for 266 hours that people can achieve astonishing feats by teaching their brains to work more efficiently.
The Guinness Book of World Records hasn’t tracked sleep deprivation records since 1989, deeming them too dangerous. Alex Boese, describing the complicated history of sleep deprivation experiments in the Museum of Hoaxes, writes, “The overall problem with determining the record for the longest a person has stayed awake is that people take ‘microsleeps’ without being aware of it. To really determine if a person has been constantly awake you’d need to record their brainwaves throughout the experiment. As far as I know, such a study has never been done.”
Of course, not sleeping for a week is much more impressive when one is also abstaining from food and water, as is required of the Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei.
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