So far, these are just intriguing observations. “I find it annoying how much people complain about little physical pains,” she says. Chou says the first three hold true for her by nature, she is sunny and positive, and though she often finds bruises on her body, she usually doesn’t remember getting them. Research is still early, but Fu has found that besides being more efficient at sleep, they tend to be more energetic and optimistic and have a higher tolerance for pain than people who need to spend more time in bed. Yet short sleepers may actually have an edge over everyone else. The researchers took blood samples from both women.ĭoctors once dismissed short sleepers like Chou as depressed or suffering from insomnia. “I have memories of when I was younger, and my dad being frustrated with her for staying up really late, but she always seemed fine,” she says. But after the researchers interviewed her about her family’s sleeping patterns, she realized her mom is also a short sleeper. But once I started reading about it, it was sort of an epiphany.”Ĭhou doesn’t know yet if she has the identified genetic variants. She immediately recognized herself when he described short sleepers. One day at a faculty meeting, she and Ptacek chatted about his work. Among the participants is Chou, who also happens to work at UCSF. “If we can get a better understanding of why their sleep is more efficient, we can then come back and help everybody sleep more efficiently,” Fu says. The researchers are now collecting data on short sleepers in order to figure out just how rare these mutations are. In 2019, Fu and Ptacek discovered two more genes connected to natural short sleep, and they’ll soon submit a paper describing a fourth, providing even more evidence that functioning well on less sleep is a genetic trait. About a decade ago, Fu discovered the first human gene linked to natural short sleep people who had a rare genetic mutation seemed to get the same benefits from six hours of sleep a night as those without the mutation got from eight hours. Ptacek and his wife Ying-Hui Fu, also a professor of neurology at UCSF, are pioneers in the relatively new field of sleep genetics. “But that’s as crazy as saying everybody has to be 5 ft. “There are many people who think everyone needs eight to eight and a half hours of sleep per night and there will be health consequences if they don’t get it,” says Ptacek. But the ideal sleep duration has long been thought to be universal. People can manipulate their circadian rhythm through all kinds of external factors, like setting an alarm clock or exposing themselves to light. Those patterns are regulated by the body’s circadian rhythm, a 24-hour internal clock. Some people are morning larks, rising early, and others are night owls, who like staying up late. ![]() “We know almost nothing about sleep and how it’s regulated,” says Ptacek. But details about what’s actually going on during shut-eye are sparse. Louis Ptacek, a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “It’s probably true that bad sleep leads to increased risks of virtually every disorder,” says Dr. We know it’s important getting too little is linked to heightened risk for metabolic disorders, Type 2 diabetes, psychiatric disorders, autoimmune disease, neurodegeneration and many types of cancer. Searching for a good night’s rest? Find it by signing up for TIME’s guide to the scientific secrets of sleep. By listening more closely to the ticking of our internal clocks, researchers expect to uncover novel ways to help everybody get more out of their sleeping and waking lives. Scientists have found that our internal body clocks vary so greatly that they could form the next frontiers of personalized medicine. “Hung over, almost.”Īlthough the federal government recommends that Americans sleep seven or more hours per night for optimal health and functioning, new research is challenging the assumption that sleep is a one-size-fits-all phenomenon. “If I sleep seven or eight hours, I feel way worse,” she says. Still, in an effort to match the slumber schedules of the rest of the world, she would sometimes drug herself–with melatonin, alcohol or marijuana edibles–into getting more sleep. “When I’m in that rhythm, that’s when I feel my best.” ![]() “It feels really good for me to sleep four hours,” she says. In fact, sleeping just four hours a night left her feeling full of energy and with free time to get more done at her job leading a research lab that studies bacteria. ![]() Chou long assumed that meant she was a bad sleeper. For as long as Seemay Chou can remember, she has gone to bed at midnight and woken around 4:30 a.m.
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