Related Issues. 1  Consumer Health: CAM Claims (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) 2  Credentialing, Licensing, and Education (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health) 3  Herbs at a Glance (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health)
The absolute longest anyone has voluntarily stayed awake before nodding off is 264 hours (about 11 days) â a record set by 17-year-old Randy Gardner for a high-school science fair project in 1965. Before falling asleep on day 11, he was essentially a vegetable with its eyes open. [ Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders ].
As with the clinical experiments on animals, it is very difficult to determine whether lack of sleep is the definitive cause of death in people suffering from FFI. Thus, we cannot conclude that 6 months really is how long you can go without sleep before you die.