Researchers agree why some people thrive on little sleep and others need more than 8 hours: It’s all in the genes

Health experts are constantly telling people that they should be getting at least eight hours of sleep in order to avoid a range of health problems. However, for millions of Americans it is a challenge as they suffer from chronic sleep problems, leaving them groggy and struggling to get through the day.

But there is an exceedingly rare group of people that wake up fresh and ready to go with as little as four hours of sleep on a regular basis and they don’t show any adverse health consequences. These people are known as ‘natural short sleepers’, and researchers are beginning to unravel the secrets behind how they can go against the 8-hours-of-sleep-a-night mantra.

Short sleepers are built differently

Knowledge about sleep and its purpose have developed from being thought of as just a period of rest to something that is a vital part of living a healthy and long life. During our periods of shuteye, the body and brain perform complex processes that remove waste and toxins, get rid of faulty synapses, and consolidate memories, as well as recharging our batteries so to speak.

While it was known that people feel into different categories, larks and night owls, and short sleepers and long sleepers, and that most people fall in between these, until recently the actual outliers hadn’t been specifically identified. Without someone to study, it was difficult to analyze what was behind these traits.

Fortunately, for University of California, San Francisco researchers Louis Ptáček, a neurologist, and Ying-Hui Fu, a human geneticist and neuroscientist, an older woman came to visit in 1996. She was concerned that her unconventional sleep pattern of going to bed after dinner and then waking up in the middle of the night, known as early-lark behavior, would ruin the lives of her granddaughters who had inherited it. It turned out that she had a genetic mutation that programed her body to follow that type of sleep schedule to function properly.

Her case prompted more and more people to approach them. One family stood out though. Unlike early-larks, they didn’t go to bed early but still woke up incredibly early, unimpaired by getting just six hours of sleep every night.

Once again, the answer was in their genes. The researchers identified a genetic mutation called DEC2 was responsible for them being able to sleep less but not experiencing any consequences from getting less than 8 hours of slumber.

The Smithsonian magazine reports that the team has now identified seven genes that can be associated with natural short sleep and seem to be preventing any obvious health consequences. Exactly how the genes are working is still being investigated. But for example, Fu and Ptáček have found that the DEC2 gene mutation appears to increase the production of a brain hormone orexin, which promotes wakefulness.

While the genes appear to be playing a major role in how people sleep, they believe that there are other factors like the environment that may be impeding people from getting a good night’s sleep. Even so, with what they have brought to light so far, should ease people’s worries about having to get 8 hours of sleep, knowing that different people require different amounts of slumber.

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