Los Angeles (CNN) -- Michael Jackson died while preparing to set a world record for the most successful concert run, but he unknowingly set another record that led to his death. Jackson may be the only human ever to go two months without REM -- rapid eye movement -- sleep, which is vital to keep the brain and body alive. The 60 nights of propofol infusions Dr. Conrad Murray said he gave Jackson to treat his insomnia is something a sleep expert says no one had ever undergone.
I find the subject of sleep pretty interesting from a medicinal and personal viewpoint. I recently indeed read in an article lab rats die after like 5 weeks of being kept awake and upon autopsy no actual cause could be found. It is still largely unknown what sleep exactly does to the human body.
I noticed the mentioning of extreme memory loss of Jackson, being unable to remember the words of songs he had sung for decades. It also reminded me of some Vietnamese students I knew and who stayed up all night studying, with of course as result that this was largely useless as you need sleep to probably let your neurons configure themselves to actually "save" this information somehow. I also told this to my wife when I met her and she had to admit that afterwards she only studied half a day and slept properly both at noon and at night and had much better exam results.
There are also examples of famous inventors who came up with their own sleep schedules, Edison and Buckminster Fuller probably the most well known. These schedules all seem to have been total failures.
I guess now we at least know how long humans can do without REM sleep. A bit more than 60 days it seems.
