A UK man claims to have been in a permanent state of alertness for the past two years, after a mysterious condition has left him unable to fall asleep, even when under strong sedatives.

A couple of years ago, Oliver Alvis was leading a normal life, working as a train conductor and settling into a four-bedroom apartment he had recently bought, but everything changed one night when he couldn’t fall asleep at all. Little did he know that this would not be a one-time insomnia episode, but a two-year nightmare that continues to this day and makes life almost unbearable. Oliver describes the last 21 months as “struggling to survive in a body that seems to be on fire, burning from the inside,” adding that he has spent a fortune trying to figure out what is wrong with him, but doctors still don’t have an answer to give him.

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A Vietnamese woman has been dubbed a “sleepless mutant” because of her alleged ability to shun sleep completely. She claims to have remained awake continuously for the last three decades.

49-year-old Nguyen Ngoc My Kim is known as “the seamstress who never sleeps” in her home province of Long An, a nickname she gladly accepts because it apparently suits her. Every time Miss Kim’s reputation attracted the attention of the media, she confirmed that she hadn’t slept in several decades, adding that the complete lack of sleep hadn’t affected her health at all. However, the Vietnamese seamstress has always been quick to point out that she wasn’t born with the ability to function without sleep, she conditioned herself to stay up late ever since she was a little girl. At first, she would lose sleep because she loved reading late into the night, and later, when she started working as a seamstress, she worked late in order to complete her orders. At one point, she didn’t feel the need to sleep at all, so she didn’t.

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A 36-year-old woman in Vietnam has been raising a lot of eyebrows in her home country with claims of suffering from an insomnia that has lasted for over 11 years.

Ms. Tran Thi Luu, who works at a preschool in the city of Quảng Ngãi, has become the talk of Vietnamese social media after it was reported that she hasn’t slept in more than 11 years. In a recent interview, the woman said that her decade-long insomnia began with a bizarre crying episode. Tears just started flowing from her eyes for no apparent reason, and even trying to lie down and close her eyes couldn’t stop the trickle of water. The inexplicable crying eventually ceased, but so did her capacity to fall asleep. Try as she might, Luu couldn’t ‘log out’ anymore. Her eyes were tired, but her mind was fully awake, so for the last 11 years she has done little other than lie down with her eyes closed to relax while her husband and children are sleeping.

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Daisuke Hori, a 36-year-old man from Japan, has spent the last few years training his mind and body to function on as little sleep as possible. He claims to get just 30 minutes of sleep a day and not get tired at all.

Do you ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day, and that you’d rather shun sleep so you can do the things you like? Well, that’s probably most people, but few of us actually go through with that idea. Daisuke Hori is one such man. He claims to have lowered his daily sleep time from about 8 hours a day to just 30 minutes, without suffering any of the severe side-effects associated with sleep deprivation. He is the chairman of the “Japan Short-sleeper Association” and now teaches others how to lower their daily sleeping time so they can enjoy life more.

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Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a woman who claimed that she hadn’t slept in about four decades but never felt tired or sleepy either.

Most people can’t go 24 hours without a little shut-eye, but Li Zhanying, a woman from Henan, China claimed to have gone 40 years without any sleep, a feat confirmed by her husband and their neighbors, some of whom actually put her to the test, only to fall asleep themselves. Li last remembered getting some sleep when she was five or six, but now in her mid-40s, sleep is nothing but an old memory.

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Japan has some of the world’s longest working hours, but some companies are starting to realize that their workers also need to sleep in order to be productive. One such company is actually encouraging employees to sleep more by rewarding them with points that can be spent at cafes and cafeterias.

CRAZY, a Tokyo-based wedding planning company, recently announced the implementation of a “sleep remuneration system” to encourage its workforce to get more sleep. It has teamed up with Airweave, a startup specializing in sleep analysis technology and will be monitoring its employees sleep patterns. Workers who install the Sleep Analysis app on their smartphones and share their data with the company are eligible to receive points according to how many hours of sleep they get ever night. CRAZY hopes that the new reward system will improve the lifestyle habits and overall health of its employees, as well as boost their productivity.

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7-year-old Wyatt Shaw, a 7-year-old boy from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, recently woke up from an 11-day slumber that left doctors scratching their heads. When he finally woke up, the second-grader had trouble speaking and moving around, but has since made good progress and is expected to make a full recovery.

After attending his aunt’s wedding and being the life of the party, Wyatt’s mother, Amy, expected him to sleep in the next day, but she never imagined that it would take 11 days for him to finally wake up. She tried waking him up several times, but Wyatt just couldn’t stay awake, and even though he sometimes opened his eyes, it just seemed like he wasn’t really aware of anything.

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A single night of insomnia is enough to drive some people crazy, but can you imagine struggling to fall asleep every night? A shocking one in three people suffer from some degree of insomnia, with a few forced to stare into their smartphones until morning to make the hours go by faster. But, if counting sheep doesn’t help, insomniacs are swearing by a “magic” UK-made body lotion that can allegedly help you sleep like a baby.

Aptly named “Sleepy”, this intriguing beauty product recently went viral on Reddit, with dozens of of users swearing by its sleep-inducing properties. Some of these people claim to have been suffering from chronic insomnia that no medication could cure, but then they discovered Sleepy and were able to get a good night’s sleep. The official website of Lush, the company that makes this lotion also features over 60 reviews from people going on and on about how it helped them get over their worst sleepless nights.

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Climbing into a bed and just dozing off for 45 minutes doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d expect to be doing in a gym, but one UK fitness club claims that its “napercise” classes can help exhausted parents better deal with their hectic daily lives by regenerating the mind, body and even burning a few calories.

New research recently revealed that there is a dangerous “tiredness epidemic” currently sweeping the UK, with 86% of parents reporting that they suffer from fatigue and 26% saying that they get less than five hours of sleep per night. In an effort to promote the benefits of sleep and boost people’s mental and physical wellbeing, David Lloyd Club, which operates dozens of gyms and fitness clubs throughout Europe, recently launched a “napercise class” that invites people to get 45 minutes of shut-eye instead of instead of burning themselves out even more with traditional fitness exercises.

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People often prefer to fall asleep while watching TV, but that doesn’t always work out as planned. Sometimes the shows you end up watching turn out to be genuinely interesting and instead of slowly dozing off, you end up spending hours with your eyeballs glued to the screen. But there’s no risk of that happening when using Napflix, a video streaming service designed to be more than boring enough to put you to sleep.

The Napflix website describes the service as a “video platform where you can find the most silent and sleepy content selection to relax your brain and easily fall asleep.” Regardless of what specific type of programs you find least interesting, you’re bound to find them on Napflix. While browsing the selection of boring video material, you’ll find everything from from long lectures and documentaries, senseless game simulations and chess matches to static landscapes and religious rituals.

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After their highly successful 2013 product Sprayable Energy, Silicon Valley startup Sprayable are back with a new product involving transdermal technology – ‘Sprayable Sleep’. It is the world’s first topical melatonin spray that helps you fall asleep naturally and wake up refreshed.

While melatonin pills have long since been used to treat sleep related disorders, the makers of Sprayable Sleep claim it has several benefits over the pills. Ben Yu, 22, and his partner Devan Soni, 35, say that the effectiveness of the hormone in the pill form could be lost to the digestive process, but this doesn’t happen with the spray.

“Sprayable gives you the exact level of melatonin you need (often 30 times less than you ingest with pills) and delivers it gradually over time – mimicking how your body naturally produces and uses melatonin,” the creators said. “Sprayable Sleep puts you in control of your sleep. Whether you’re traveling and have jet lag or are working the night shift, Sprayable will help you get sleep when you want so you’re refreshed and alert when you need it most.”

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