A woman who says she hasn’t slept in 40 years has left doctors baffled.
Li Zhanying from Henan, China, claimed that she was only five years old when she last got some sleep.
Neighbours have tried to prove her wrong by staying awake on a card-playing marathon in order to tire her out. But the neighbours eventually gave up and went home, with Li still wide awake after several hours.
She even took sleeping pills, hoping it will help her sleep yet she stayed awake, and the strange phenomenon has now made her a local celebrity.
Liu Suoquin, Li’s husband, has also corroborated his wife’s claims. He said that since they got married she would always complete household chores late at night as she couldn’t sleep.
When the couple first started sleeping in the same bed, Li would often exclaim “I can’t sleep!” to her confused husband.
Doctors were initially unable to diagnose Li’s condition when she first sought medical help, reports the Bastille Post.
But now a trip to a specialist sleep centre in Beijing has shed light on her condition.
It turns out Li sleeps, but not like anyone else on the planet.
Brainwave monitors were able to show that she gets no more than 10 minutes of light sleep per day, a statistic that is still staggering. This was only revealed 16 hours into the 48-hour-long monitoring test.
It turns out that she was nodding off whilst talking to her husband, entering a sleepy trance where she could still hold a conversation like someone who is awake.
The phenomenon is very similar to sleepwalking as her body remains fully functional whilst she is technically sleeping.
