People who don’t need sleep
Hong Wu
Patients often tell me that they “haven’t slept well”, and some even say that they “haven’t slept for months”. In fact, these patients actually do sleep, but the quality of sleep is not good, and some of them even have subjective insomnia. Hong Wu, psychiatrist, Shanghai Mental Health Center
But is there really a “person who doesn’t need sleep” in this world? The so-called “no need” means that even without sleep, the person is still energetic, mentally normal, working and living as usual, and physically healthy. Among them, as little as a few months without sleep, more than a few decades without sleep.
For example, in the city of Secovia, near Madrid, Spain, there was a man named Herschus Frutos Senovia, who, from the age of nineteen, was awakened from a normal sleep and then slept less and less. By 1955, it began not to sleep; Russian newspaper Pravda reported on August 2, 2006, a Russian woman Clara Zulkina, who was struck by lightning more than ten years ago, but after miraculously recovering her life, she lost her desire to sleep, Zunekina still works on a state farm for milking, despite the loss of sleep, sometimes only 2-3 hours of sleep a week But she does not feel sleepy and tired. Similarly, the famous American lawyer Samuel Untermeyer, the Swede Olav Eriksson, the Vietnamese Thai Ngoc, etc.
This strange phenomenon mentioned above is also found in China. For example, there is a Song septuagenarian in Pingjiu County, Henan Province, who has not slept for 50 years. According to the old man himself, he rarely slept when he was young, only one or two hours a day, and then to about 20 years old, sleep less and less, but also once or twice a day to snooze, each snooze is only one or two minutes. After the snooze, mental strength is restored. Some of them, have used a variety of drugs to help sleep, but all to no avail.
See here, we will not only think, people really can not sleep? Next, let’s understand why people need to sleep!
Why do people need to sleep? On this question, in fact, the scientific community does not have a clear answer.
The most common view is that during sleep, the brain and nervous system are repaired and organized, nutrition is replenished, and energy is stored. Physical strength is restored and fatigue is eliminated. Therefore, some people use the three “R’s” (Repairing, Restoration, Regeneration) to describe this process. However, how the sleep process actually drives away fatigue and restores mental and physical energy is still being explored by biological scientists at the cellular and molecular levels (which will not be discussed in detail here).
Of course, there is also the view that humans originally did not need sleep. Sleep was only acquired by humans in the course of evolution. Due to the natural alternation of day and night, the “diurnal animal” (human cannot see objects in the dark night), like many other diurnal animals, has developed the habit of working at sunrise and resting at sunset, which gradually evolved into the alternation of waking and sleeping in line with the natural day and night. It has also been suggested that the alternation between sleep and wakefulness may be controlled by the periodic fluctuations of chemicals in the body, while certain chemical processes in the body may be related to light and darkness, thus forming a circadian sleep rhythm.
So is sleep needed by all animals? What are the differences in sleep for different animals?
Sleep is not equally essential for all animals, and there are many different ways of sleeping. Cells do not seem to have a need for sleep in the tissue culture chambers of biological scientists, let alone a circadian sleep rhythm. Similarly, protozoa such as amoebas and crawling worms grow when they eat, and rest when they don’t. Nutrition determines their fate. Sleep or not, it does not matter. Some animals, such as chickens, giraffes, rabbits, dogs, etc., do not need to sleep like humans, most of them just need a little nap, or eyes half-open, or open one eye, close one eye. The dolphins and seals have the most advanced sleep spells. Scientists have studied the EEGs of dolphins and seals and found that the left and right brains of dolphins and seals work together in a very subtle way. The left brain and the right brain take turns sleeping. So the dolphin sleeps in a waking state, and still consciously keeps changing its swimming position while sleeping!
Speaking of this, we can’t help but think that the world’s “people who don’t need to sleep” is not to have the above-mentioned animal’s special features?
Are “people who don’t need to sleep” normal or abnormal? According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD), the most likely disorder associated with this phenomenon is short sleeper.
A short sleeper is an individual who sleeps significantly less in a 24-hour period compared to his or her age group, and whose total daily routine sleep time is less than 75% of the normal minimum sleep time for his or her age group. Short sleepers are also referred to as “healthy” insomnia, asymptomatic insomnia, and the shortest sleep in the normal sleep spectrum.
From these definitions, it appears that those who “don’t need sleep” largely meet the criteria for short sleepers. Some of them get a few hours of sleep in a day, others may only get a few minutes of sleep, and others may only have a short “snooze” or yawn. Other than “no sleep,” they generally have no other abnormalities or physical or mental disorders associated with sleep problems.
In this way, these “non-sleepers” are not completely sleep deprived, but simply sleep less. However, some “people who don’t need sleep” insist that they do not sleep at all.
CCTV’s “Into Science” program reported on a woman who claimed she had not slept in Henan for 40 years. Li claimed that she had not slept since she was five or six years old, not only did she not need to sleep but she was also energetic every day and did not get tired of working. The reporter took Li to the hospital to check inside and outside, the examination were checked. In addition to mild gastritis, she is very healthy. At that time, the doctor also gave her a polysomnography monitoring, and found that Li’s sleep chart had signs of sleep, and her sleep had about 100 minutes of light and moderate sleep periods throughout the 24 hours. So, that means Li actually had less than 2h of sleep in 24 hours. Subsequently, the reporter took her to another hospital again for 48h sleep monitoring, and it turned out that her sleep did indeed occur, and it was not a short sleep, actually sleeping almost 16 hours out of 48 hours. But the strange thing is that in the real-time monitoring screen always see her eyes open, even if the longest time lying in bed with eyes closed is not more than 10 minutes, so 16 hours of sleep occurred in 2 days, how did she do it? The sleep chart suggests that Li’s sleep continuity is poor and she often sleeps and wakes up. Even the monitoring screen shows that Li was chatting with her husband, but the sleep chart shows a sleeping state.
As to whether there are other “people who do not need to sleep” in the past and present who are in the same situation as this Li from Henan, we do not know.
In short, through the description of this article, we understand that “people who do not need to sleep” do exist in this world, and this phenomenon is still very difficult to be fully explained in the field of sleep science today, and these so-called “people who do not need to sleep” may not be completely These so-called “sleepless people” may not be completely sleepless, but just sleep less, or not consistently, without deep sleep, etc. They may belong to the category of “short sleepers”. As for, the reason for this phenomenon may be related to a variety of reasons, may be related to a certain genetic genes, may also be related to minor brain injury, and may also be related to some psychological events.