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Thai Ngoc, an 80-year-old farmer in Vietnam, claims that he hasn’t slept
in over 60 years, since coming down with a fever as a young man.
Somehow, this severe insomnia hasn’t affected his life.
Most people can’t go an entire day without a few hours of sleep, but one
Vietnamese man claims that he has spent the last 60 years wide awake,
without so much as a short nap. Thai Ngoc has been making news headlines
in his home country for years now, ever since it was originally reported
that he does not need any sleep to lead a happy, active life. Ngoc’s
family, including his wife, children, friends, and neighbors insist that
they have never seen the octogenarian sleep, and he insists that the
complete lack of sleep has never affected him negatively.
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“I don’t know if the insomnia has impacted my health or not, but I’m
still healthy and I can do the farm work normally like others,” Thai
Ngoc told Vietnamese website Thahn Nien News.
Born in 1942, Thai Ngoc claims that he came down with a severe fever at
age 20, and even though he survived, it left him unable to sleep again.
Despite allegedly trying various medications, traditional folk remedies,
and even ample quantities of alcohol, the Vietnamese man couldn’t fall
asleep. He kept hoping that his insomnia was temporary, but he claims he
has gone without sleep for six decades.
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Thai Ngoc story has been presented as somewhat of a miracle or a unique
superpower in his home country of Vietnam, but according to some
doctors, he might be getting some sleep and just not know it. Dr Vikas
Wadhwa at Sleep Services Australia said that some insomniacs lack the
ability to tell the difference between being awake and being asleep, so
the 80-year-old man could be falling asleep for short periods of time
during the day and just not know it. These power naps could be enough to
keep him going.
Because Ngoc has never agreed to get properly tested and observed by
sleep scientists, his claims and those of people close to him are the
only evidence to go by. But he is definitely not the only person to
claim to suffer from decades-long insomnia. A while back, we wrote about
a Chinese woman who claimed to have not slept in 40 years.
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