Are You Getting Enough Sleep? What happens if you don't get enough sleep? Randy Gardner,a high school student in the UnitedStates,wanted to find out. He designed an experiment on the effects of sleeplessness for a school science project. With doctors watching him carefully,Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours and 12 mi-nutes. That's eleven days and nights without sleep ! What effect did sleeplessness have on Gardner? After 24 hours without sleep, Gardner started havingtrouble reading and watching television The words and pictures were too blurry(模糊). By the third day,hewas having trouble doing things with his hands. By the fourth day, Gardner was hallucinating(产生幻觉). Forexample,when he saw a street sign, he thought it was a person. He also imagined he was a famous footballplayer Over the next few days,Gardner's speech became so slurred(楚)that people couldn't understandhim He also had trouble remembering things. By the eleventh day,Gardner couldn't pass a counting test. Inthe middle of the test he simply stopped counting. He couldn't remember what he was doing. When Gardner finally went to bed, he slept for 14 hours and 45 minutes. The second night he sleptfor twelve hours, the third night he slept for ten and one-half hours,and by the fourth night, he had re-turned to his normal sleep schedule. Even though Gardner recovered quickly, scientists believe that going without sleep can be danger-ous. They say that people should not repeat Randy's experiment. Tests on white rats have shown howserious sleeplessness can be. After a few weeks without sleep,the rats started losing their fur(皮毛).And even though the rats ate more food than usual, they lost weight. Eventually the rats died. During your lifetime,you will probably spend 25 years or more sleeping. But why? What is thepurpose of sleep? Surprisingly,scientists don't know for sure. Some scientists think we sleep in orderto replenish(补充)brain cells. Other scientists think that sleep helps the body to grow and to relievestress. Whatever the reason,we know that it is important to get enough sleep. Randy Gardner studied the effects of over-sleeping.