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An 81-year-old Vietnamese bloke who reckons he hasn't had a wink of sleep in more than six decades has opened up about the lifelong affliction that's left a raft of medics, scientists and acquaintances utterly stumped.
Thai Ngoc, living in a tiny village tucked away in Vietnam's Quang Nam province, claims his sleeplessness kicked off following an abrupt, nasty fever when he was roughly 20 during the Vietnam War.
From that point onwards, he insists, he's never managed so much as a doze, let alone a good night's sleep.
Ngoc and his relatives maintain that nobody has ever seen him sleeping, and he personally says he's given everything a tryfrom tablets to traditional cures and even hitting the bottlein a desperate bid to wear himself out, all to no avail.
"Seeing others sleep, I envy them," he has said. "Sitting still is unbearable,", reports the Mirror.
Ngoc puts the bonus hours he gains from his peculiar state to use by weeding fields, looking after crops and brewing homemade rice wine.
Oddly enough, Ngoc carries on functioning normally well into his twilight years, at least outwardly.
American YouTuber Drew Binsky bunked up with him for a night back in 2023 to witness the phenomenon with his own eyes, confirming that Ngoc remained wide awake the whole time and kept busy even during the early morning hours.
Ngoc's daily grind would exhaust anyone by normal standards. He toils on the farm throughout the day, lugs hefty bags of fertiliser about, grafts on his land all through the night and even smokes and drinks regularlyhabits most scientists would say only make sleep deprivation worse.
Despite this, local doctors say he appears healthy, but no definitive explanation has been found.
Some researchers and observers speculate that long-term trauma or stress from his early years, including the war and his fever illness, may have triggered or worsened his insomnia, though no formal psychological diagnosis has been made.
Others suggest it's a rare neurological anomaly, but without controlled sleep studies or hospital observation, Ngoc's claims remain unverified scientifically.
What is clear from multiple reports, though, is that this is far from a typical sleep disorder, at least as science understands them.
Chronic insufficient sleep usually leads to significant physical and mental decline. If Ngoc truly rarely sleeps at all, his case would be extraordinary because it contradicts what we know understand about the biological necessity of sleep.
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