Those people who need very little sleep

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150706-the-woman-who-barely-sleeps

by FollowSteph3 • 11 years ago

95 83 11 years ago

batou5• 11 years ago

I need very little sleep. I go to bed about 1am and wake up about 5-5:30am every day. I'm never tired.

I had a two day long migraine in 1995 and have been like it ever since. Never had a migraine after that one either. Had my nut stuffed in an MRI and nothing showed up. My neurologist said he's at a loss. No complaining though.

tbassetto2• 11 years ago

Hello from this other side of the spectrum! I need at least 8h/day of sleep to NOT have a migraine. If I don't set an alarm my mind/body will happily sleep 9 to 10 hours a day.

batou5• 11 years ago

I was like that before the mega migraine. I think I'm broken and you're not :)

mod• 11 years ago

I don't get migraines from lack of sleep, but I "need" ~8.5-9 hours (on average) to feel at my best.

I can go on 5 hours once in a while and be okay, but I have to make it up later.

I would LOVE to be able to perform well on 4 hours.

the_duck• 11 years ago

I also get migraines if I don't sleep 8-ish hours! I didn't realize that was a thing that happened to other people, too.

wutbrodo• 11 years ago

If I don't set an alarm my mind/body will happily sleep 9 to 10 hours a day.

Do you feel fully rested after 8 hours? The reason I ask is because some people simply need more than 8 hours, but have thetendency to think that 8 is the "correct" amount to sleep. I had a couple friends who were like this and when they started sleeping ~9 hours they had a marked improvement in all of the symptoms of sleep dep (energy, focus, etc etc).

davnicwil• 11 years ago

As someone whose body will also, without an alarm, sleep naturally for 9-10 hours or longer on a weekend no problem, I wonder if you've ever felt looked down upon for this trait by certain people?

I've definitely told people this in the past and had negative reactions ranging from the mild disbelief "You're serious, how can that be possible? I don't believe you" to the outright offended "What is wrong with you (as a person)? Why would you want to spend so much time sleeping? That's wrong and ridiculous behaviour".

I do find it curious how some people tend to get really uppity about this issue. As though one's sleeping habits are reflective of character and morals, or something, rather than just being a natural trait which differs person to person and which one has no choice in. Where does this come from?

farmdve• 11 years ago

I sleep an avg of 10-11 hours where my longest sleep was 13 hours a week ago, and I could still continue sleeping for hours more.

squeaky-clean• 11 years ago

If I don't set an alarm my mind/body will happily sleep 9 to 10 hours a day.

This isn't normal? :P

But seriously, if I don't set my alarm, I usually sleep about 12-16 hours. When I do wake up, it's often because of my bladder / stomach / limb-falling-asleep, and not because I feel rested. Waking up is not enjoyable regardless of how much sleep I get, 2 hours, 12 hours... I'm always a zombie-like, groggy mess. But 30 minutes later I feel great and full of energy, again, no matter how long I slept.

This is day-after-day too, and not just when I'm sleep deprived. Over the Independence Day 3-day weekend, I definitely slept more than 12 hours each day.

baby• 11 years ago

Same as you except I need my 9 hours of sleep. I'll feel bad if I don't sleep enough, like I want to throw up during the day... But I got better and better by just trying to force myself into sleeping less.

metasean7• 11 years ago

I never thought I'd be jealous of having a migraine (I've had my share already), but I'd gladly suffer another two day one if it meant I felt refreshed after only 4 hours of sleep daily from that point on!

mahyarm• 11 years ago

How much do you work out? If you took up a powerlifting regimen, do you think you would start wanting more sleep?

batou5• 11 years ago

It varies. I used to run a lot. It just hurt afterwards. No tiredness.

Hermel2• 11 years ago

I know it is hard to tell, but would you say there are adverse effects? Or do you ever need more sleep, i.e. after having studied for a maths exam the whole day?

I for one notice that I "learn" a lot while sleeping. For example, when studying for an exam, difficult exercises often seem to get much easier over night.

batou5• 11 years ago

Yes definitely adverse effects.

1. My bowel has no idea what is going on half of the time so no routine there.

2. Snoring when I do sleep. This has caused a number of problems with the wife and neighbours.

3. I can't drink alcohol at all. I end up with a 3 day long hangover even if I have a single beer.

Otherwise nothing else.

Edit: Just to add a big downside. I had to spend some time in hospital after a physical injury. There is nothing more psychologically damaging than near insomnia immobile in a hospital bed.

exexex• 11 years ago

I was once like you! In high school, college, and medical school I slept at most 4 hours a night. I was even a Division I varsity athlete. Never tired. No problems studying, drinking, exercising.

Then something changed a few years ago...I'm 42 now, so I think it started when I was 38...I now sleep 6 hours a night, sometimes even 7! It has seriously cut into might reading-for-fun time. I really wish I could go back to 4 hours.

darkmighty• 11 years ago

A curiosity: do you guys that need so little sleep perform a lot of creative activities? I feel when I don't have anything too creative (or extremely intelectually demanding) to perform I can go sleep deprived and do fine at everything, but I lose the ability to solve one of those problems you have to think for hours, or come up with good ideas.

If I'm in the process of learning something complex, I get the distinct feeling of absorbing "fully" the content when I sleep well; whereas if I don't sleep well it doesn't seem fully "processed" yet.

So my optimal sleep schedule varies by what kind of work I want to do. Do you just perform nominally at everything sleeping 4 hours?

kiba• 11 years ago

Can you confirm your medical case?

BillTheCat• 11 years ago

I wish I only needed 4 hours of sleep a night. I hate going to bed and wasting 1/3rd of the day passed out. Or getting less than that and feeling groggy and lethargic all day.

I always hear these stories of people who can live happily on 4 hours of sleep and am insanely jealous.

bachmeier2• 11 years ago

If you can't be sufficiently productive in 16 hours a day, I'm not sure having another 4 hours is going to help.

Scramblejams• 11 years ago

That assumes you get to spend all 16 as you choose.

If you have to spend 9-11 hours at work, more time helping with homework and housework, more time shuttling dependents around, etc., etc., you can end up with very little time left to spend how you choose. Adding 4 hours to that could be like multiplying your one free hour that's left by 5.

metasean7• 11 years ago

It really depends on the grogginess factor.

There have been times in my life where I was able to get about 14 hours of sleep a day. It would still take me a couple of hours to mentally 'spin-up' but once my brain was in gear the focus and acuity were amazingly productive!

There have been other times in my life when I've been forced to live on less than 5 hours a night and I was a complete zombie almost every 'waking' minute.

So, I'm with BillTheCat, I'd love to be able to sleep less but maintain the higher productivity level, that I can currently only get with many hours of sleep.

paulcole• 11 years ago

Then there's the co-workers who say they need little sleep, when the truth is their productivity is suffering...

kazinator• 11 years ago

Or maybe they are spending it elsewhere? With, say, 4 hours of sleep, you have 20 waking hours. If 8 of those waking hours are at work, 12 aren't, right?

supercoder• 11 years ago

If only people spent as little as 8 hours at work.

mrfusion• 11 years ago

I find exercise and also deep learning, challenging mental tasks make me need 7-8 hours, but otherwise when I have a series of hum drum days with no exercise I'm fine with 6 hours.

Does anyone else find that?

Hermel2• 11 years ago

Same for me.

spacemanmatt2• 11 years ago

6 hours seems to be the new magic number since I started doing 90m of ashtanga yoga daily. I get much better sustained energy output throughout the day, too.

magic_beans• 11 years ago

Yoga has done so much for my energy, productivity, and happiness. I wish I'd taken it up years ago.

bachmeier2• 11 years ago

Yep. Six hours is the maximum I can sleep. I thought there was something wrong, but since I'm fully rested on that amount, I no longer worry about it.

dicroce• 11 years ago

Are there any DNA analyses services that look for DEC2? I think I may have this..

djcary• 11 years ago

23andme does, but it doesn't include it in the default report.

You can go to https://www.23andme.com/you/explorer/gene/?gene_name=BHLHE41 and check your raw data to see if you're heterozygotic.

gwern2• 11 years ago

Drat. rs4963955: TT; rs4963956: CC; rs1480037: CC. Of course, I already knew I was not a short-sleeper but one can always hope for a hidden superpower...

metasean7• 11 years ago

More importantly, are there services that will 'give' DEC2 to people who want it? ;-)

mandeepj• 11 years ago

I have seen if you go to bed by 12 or 12:30 am and wake up by 6 or 6:30 am then you are fine and might feel fresh also but the more you delay..the more harder time you will have getting up in the morning even if you slept for the same number of hours.

lukaslalinsky• 11 years ago

I have no medical knowledge, but intuitively this makes sense to me. If you stay up longer, you need longer to refresh. It's not like you can stay up for 24 hours and then just get a regular sleep.

I have a similar pattern, but I need around 7-8 hours of sleep, so mine starts at 11 pm and waking up between 6 or 6:30 am.

syncopatience• 11 years ago

  “It’s wonderful to have so many hours in my day – I
  feel like I can live two lives,” she says.

  ...

  “There’s this social view that short sleeping is a good 
  thing and should be encouraged – we’re always hauling 
  out the example of Margaret Thatcher and top CEOs who 
  don’t need much sleep. In fact, the amount of sleep you 
  need is genetically determined as much as your height 
  or shoe size. Some people need very little sleep, 
  others need 11 or 12 hours to feel their best.”

I don't think sleeping less is only better from a social view - like this lady says, she sleeps 4 hours and she feels like she can live two lives. If I need to sleep 12 hours to feel rested, doesn't it stand to reason that I can only live half a life? Maybe sleeping less than you need to feel your best is a worthwhile trade if you can spend more time living...

Nicholas_C• 11 years ago

Sleep is the cousin of death.

sheepmullet• 11 years ago

If you use the 12 hours wisely then you can live a very full life. My life is much more focused now that I get 10+ hours of sleep (of course some people are super focused and sleep 4 hours - but the average person "wastes" a lot of the day).

latimer• 11 years ago

Anecdotally, I've found that the method in the article about having a fixed wake-up time worked for me. In college I used to sleep 8-9 hours a night and would feel awful if I got less than 7. I have trouble sleeping early even when I'm tired so when I started working I was only sleeping 5-6 hours and could barely make it through the work day even loaded up with caffeine. After half a year or so I noticed I could skip the caffeine and still felt alert. Now even if I try I can't sleep more than 8 hours.

hayksaakian• 11 years ago

It's amazing how humans spend one third of their life asleep, but the science of sleep is still very exploratory and inconclusive.

bigtunacan• 11 years ago

While it's an interesting read, it doesn't really provide enough information to show that this is a good thing. What is the average lifespan of people with this mutation?

Even if Abby lives a normal lifespan we still have too little data we need some randomized samples.

I come from a family of short sleepers. I always go to bed later than my wife and wake up earlier with more energy, this is still the case now that I'm in my 30s, but I have severe health problems compared to the average person my age. Is this related to not getting enough sleep or just another example of confounding.

It would be good to see some real statistical evidence to show that her mutation is even positive.

e40• 11 years ago

Even if those with the mutation lived shorter lives, they might live longer "useful" lives (because they are awake more hours, in total, than someone without the mutation than lives years longer).

MichaelCrawford2• 11 years ago

I need more sleep than anyone I have ever heard of other than sick people - that is I sleep a lot when otherwise healthy - however I sleep very irregularly, commonly staying awake for days at a time then sleeping for several days.

I have always been this way it was a problem in grade school, and is why I am self employed.

In 2010 I determined that I can stay awake for four days before I start to experience subtle visual hallucinations; stay awake any longer and they became quite severe.

I think this may have damaged my brain somehow. At one time when I stayed awake so long I could work productively, no I cannot, however I still have that same sleep cycle.

manigandham• 11 years ago

Four(!) days? Seems like a neurological problem, have you had a medical exam or sleep study about this?

gwern2• 11 years ago

I don't believe any harm has been identified yet, so any harm must be much more subtle than most genetic disorders one might be thinking of.

But if you're looking for an evolutionary rationale, the extra energy expenditure of 4+ hours additional wakefulness (either on its own or due to extra synaptic energy consumption if you accept Tononi's SHY theory of sleep) is a sufficient reproductive-fitness penalty in a pre-modern context to explain why it's rare.

we need some randomized samples.

These pretty much are randomized samples. You can look at the siblings and relatives and now you've got Mendelian randomization, I think.

Those people who need very little sleep

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