“Short sleeper” is a new term to me, but on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon took a closer look at the condition. Short sleepers make up a very small percentage of the population and don’t need naps or coffee. In fact, with just five or six hours of sleep, these folks feel more energized.
Short sleepers are not sleep deprived but genuinely thrive on four to six hours of sleep a night. According to Dr. Ying-Hui Fu, a human geneticist and neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, “A lot of them are very energetic; they’re multi-taskers.”
Elena Angeli is a short sleeper who naturally sleeps about 5.5 hours a night. She hasn’t needed much sleep for most of her life and remembers that she stopped napping when she was about 3 years old.
Short sleepers tend to be thin. Dr. Fu has been studying short sleepers for ten years and said it’s not clear yet whether short sleepers are thin because of a fast metabolism or just because they’re so active. They also tend to be more positive and have a higher tolerance to pain.
Angeli, for instance, has had dental work done on an exposed nerve twice without pain killers. She said, “It’s not that I don’t feel pain …I just probably don’t interpret it in a negative way and fixate on it.”
The condition is, however, genetic. So, if you’re interested in becoming a short sleeper, it won’t just happen—it’s got to be in your genes.
Amazing.
im a short sleeper and i can relate im a small girl.... almost sickly small and no matter how hard i try i cant gain wait, im always active and always have lots of enegry even after a tough shift at work (im a chef), is this something i sould get checked out?
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