For 11 days and 25 minutes, 17-year-old Randy Gardner didn't sleep for a high school science fair project in California in 1963, setting the world record for longest anyone has gone without sleep. Other people are said to have broken this record. Robert McDonald went 18 days and nearly 22 hours without sleep in 1986, but none were monitored as closely or by a doctor as Gardner.
Guinness World Records no longer covers this feat. In 1997 they stopped accepting new submissions due to "risks associated with sleep deprivation".
But what are these risks? What happens to people who experience prolonged sleep deprivation?
Sleep is necessary for executive, emotional, and bodily functions, and insufficient sleep can increase the risk of several health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression. Experts say that people need six to eight hours of continuous sleep at the same interval every 24 hours.
source: Livescience.com
