14 DAY TRIAL // From the employer's perpective, this is the ideal employee: the one who never sleeps. Eventually, s/he doesn't even pee or poop. Well, Thai Ngoc, a 64-year-old Vietnamese man, does pee and poop, but does not sleep. He is famous for being awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights, as informed by the Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien.
At the moment, Ngoc does not display any apparent health effect (of course, except for the fact that he cannot sleep). The most amazing fact is that the man's brain seems not to be affected by his condition, and the individual is mentally normal and carries 100kg of pig feed down a 4km road. "I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I'm still healthy and can farm normally like others," said Ngoc.
"My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down. When Ngoc went to Da Nang for a medical examination, doctors gave him a clean bill of health, except a minor decline in liver function." explained his wife.
Ngoc currently has his 5ha farm at the foot of a mountain and he is busy farming and taking care of pigs and chickens all day long. He lives with his six children at their house in Que Trung. The sleepless nights allow Ngoc to do extra farm work or guard his farm at night against thieves. "I used three months of sleepless nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish.", said Ngoc.
His condition installed following a bout of fever experienced by Ngoc in 1973. Still, in April, 2007, Ngoc reported that he was starting to feel grumpy due to the lack of sleep. This condition is extremely odd as animal experiments showed that they die sooner of sleep deprivation than they do from lack of food, as sleep is an imperative metabolic need.
During sleep, the body enters in a predominantly anabolic phase, when it develops, grows, heals and builds muscle; the immune system is at its peak (that's why, when we're ill, we wake up without the cold). While sleeping, many organs, and especially the brain, re-fuel (in the case of the brain with glucose).
Now, many substances (including hormones) reach the peak of their secretion, the nervous synapses are rebuilt, and the long-term memories are strengthened. The growth hormone (somatotrope) acts only during the night, determining the growth of young people. Only during the sleep do the tissues assimilate proteins and fat (so, avoid eating fat-rich food before a good night's sleep!).