Sleepless in Swindon - man who slept 14 minutes a night enters land of ...

For almost two decades, Philip Skeates woke up dog tired, even though he had just spent a good 12 hours in bed. He would get up for breakfast, then stagger back to bed until noon. By eight at night he was nodding off.

Eventually his wife persuaded him to seek medical help. Her husband, 39, was completely exhausted, and she was suffering too.

To the amazement of experts, he was diagnosed with one of the worst cases of sleep apnoea - a condition that causes the airways to close - that had ever been seen in Britain.

It meant that Skeates stopped breathing every 40 seconds or so during the night. He would briefly wake up, without properly regaining consciousness, and then fall back to sleep. And the process would begin over again.

Doctors estimated Skeates was only actually sleeping for a few seconds at a time, and for less than 15 minutes in total every night.

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