A resident of the town of Kamen-Kashirsky in the Volyn region of Ukraine, Fyodor Nesterchuk is learning … to sleep. First, for a little bit, for 15 minutes, then for half an hour, on other especially successful nights, you can pokemarize for as much as an hour and a half. Not yet anymore. But compared to total insomnia, which lasted 22 years, this is already a great success
Night library
The dream finally left him in 1986. Why, he himself does not know for sure. I got sciatica - my back ached, my legs were numb. And this aching pain somehow drove away the sleep. I went to the doctors. I tried everything that was available both in the arsenal of official medicine and in the recipes of healers. But neither a spoonful of honey at night, nor the most lethal sleeping pills brought rest - only a headache.
I had to get used to living without sleep. Reading at night has become a daily routine. When the home library was read, Fyodor Nikitich began to learn the texts he especially liked by heart - this way the night time that bothered him flew by faster. In my sixties, for example, I learned The Lay of Igor's Host. Friends at first did not believe - they checked from an arbitrary place. Nesterchuk immediately picked up the torn line!
Ask the Japanese
And doctors sometimes did not fully trust the patient's complaints, they assured: it seems that you are not sleeping, but in fact you probably grab several hours without even realizing sleep.
It became interesting to check myself. For this Fyodor Nikitich got a job at such night work, where sleep is impossible according to the regulations. He served as a night watchman at such enterprises where there are control calls and regular reports are provided. He was never found sleeping.
Local doctors still do not trust - they repeat about this form of sleep, when the brain is resting, and the consciousness does not fix the pause of wakefulness.
But foreign experts, who heard about the Nesterchuk phenomenon, treated him with all their attention. The Japanese insisted on instrumental research. They put him in the regional hospital for two days, covered his whole body with sensors (“If you would like to - you won’t fall asleep,” laughs Nesterchuk) and recorded only 15 minutes of rest for two days. For knowledgeable people, this is a fantastic phenomenon: after all, even super-energetic personalities, such as Napoleon, slept 4 hours a day.
At 67 years old, Fyodor Nikitich does not really hope for a full recovery and a return to full sleep: the stress he has endured and old age stimulate insomnia. But the latest successes - an hour and a half of unconsciousness overnight - inspire optimism in him. Maybe over time it will reach Napoleon's norm.
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Specialist comment
- Science is not aware of strictly proven cases when a person slept less than four hours a day, - says a doctor-somnologist, associate professor of the Moscow Medical Academy. Sechenov Mikhail Poluektov. - Although every now and then there are reports of people like Nesterchuk who sleep one and a half to two hours, or even less. As a scientist, I don't trust these messages. Serious investigations of this phenomenon have not been carried out, at least I have not met a single scientific report. It is possible that such people doze off with their eyes open several times a night. And the proof that we are not dealing with a disease is its duration: so long, 22 years, they do not live with the disease. Fyodor Nikitich's excellent memory just proves that he is not sick, because insomnia leads to a memory disorder.
RATING. Great people who had an unusual dream
1. Akhenaten. Egyptian pharaoh, XIV century BC e.
I slept for 16 hours without a break.
2. Cleopatra. Queen, 1st century BC e.
I could stay awake for 4 nights in a row.
3. Napoleon. Emperor of France, late 18th - early 19th century
After 10 minutes of sleep, I fully recovered strength.
4. Stalin. General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) - VKP (b) - CPSU, 1922-1953.
I went to bed in the morning.