Genetic Mutation Enables Less Sleep 272
reporter writes to tell us that researchers are claiming to have discovered a genetic mutation that allows people to manage with much less sleep. One of the researchers hopes that this could lead to artificially reducing the amount of sleep required in your average human. "Although the mutation has been identified in only two people, the power of the research stems from the fact that the shortened sleep effect was replicated in mouse and fruit-fly studies. As a result, the research now gives scientists a clearer sense of where to look for genetic traits linked to sleep patterns."
Boy, this sounds great ... (Score:5, Interesting)
On second thought, is slitting my wrists an option?
Presence of Restoration Effects in These Subjects? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a biologist and I don't know what sleep durations are for other mammals but the scientist in me wonders why we settled out at eight hours a day if we are more vulnerable with our eyes closed. You would think it performs pretty important functions (or did perform) for the 5 percent of short sleepers not to collect more food and proliferate more efficiently and more frequently than the other 95% 8 hour sleepers. Perhaps in times of famine or disease this 5% are more susceptible and since we no longer have them they are freed from these shackles? Perhaps (since the two subjects noted were ages 40 and 70) this only becomes apparent with the onset of age that we never made it to back in the day? Any other ideas?
Age related? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what their sleep patters were like when they were teenagers. When I was in high school, I needed at least 10 hours, and preferred 12. Now that I'm almost 40, I can easily operate on 3 or 4 hours, routinely get 6, and sleeping in on saturday is 8 or 9.
no thanks (Score:3, Interesting)
They *feel* they had enough sleep (Score:4, Interesting)
They ... found a mother and daughter who were naturally short sleepers. The women routinely function on about 6 hours of sleep a night; the average person needs 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep.
âoeWhen they wake up in morning, they feel they have slept enough,â Dr. Fu said.
These women feel they've had enough sleep, but that doesn't mean that they are fully rested and recovered from their previous day's activities. While I don't have access to the journal article, I would be interested in seeing whether mice or flies with the homologous mutation have shorter life spans or other problems that accrue over longer periods of time.
This Guy Hasn't Slept for 30 Years (Score:5, Interesting)
6 hours unusual? (Score:5, Interesting)
A great documentary about this subject was from the Horizon program, entitled The Secret Life of Your Bodyclock [bbc.co.uk]. One of the things that they stated was some peoples body clocks run on different cycles. I believe they had examples of a 32 hour "day" clock and a 22 hour one and the differences that this placed on the subjects.
The comment that i wanted to make was that there are probably lots of people who do not fit into the 24 hour lifestyle that we are forced into. The secret life of your bodyclock was very eye opening. They had all sorts of great stats on why you shouldn't exercise in the morning, that you should always consume alcohol between 6-8pm (local time) and a great section on why teenagers hate getting up. Its well worth the watch if you can find it somehow.... [mininova.org]
Da Vinci (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Age related? (Score:2, Interesting)
How much caffeine do you drink per day? I think a lot of the disparity is due to the fact that we (rightly) keep younger people from using caffeine and other stimulants.
The researchers in the article specifically pointed out that though a lot of people regularly get by with 6 hours of sleep, they do this using stimulants, not an innate propensity for less sleep.
I must be a mutant... (Score:3, Interesting)
I regularly rely on less than 6 hours of sleep per night
with generally no impairment in waking function.
I've been like this my whole life.
Re:Presence of Restoration Effects in These Subjec (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, those thoughts were the first that came to mind. Sleep is a big deal for so many proven reasons and so many slightly understood reasons. But I guess one reason we'd sleep for so long would be to conserve energy in a more natural environment with limited food.
My wife's immune system seems to be ridiculously strong, but maybe it's partly due to the fact that she always gets plenty of sleep and if she starts feeling slightly sick she sleeps an extra couple of hours that night/day.
Regarding the vulnerable state of sleep aspect, I've often wondered if snoring kept some of the nasty animals away at night. Then again, even my cat snores sometimes and cats probably could hear a hair fall. And back to humans, I always wondered if the early risers helped protect the late sleepers, and late the bed types helped protect the ones that slept early.
read Beggars in Spain (Score:3, Interesting)
What if, suddenly there were ppl with practically 33% more lifespan? More time every day to train sports, science, whatever - even work? No chance one of them attending chess games, olympic games or similar.
It would lead to them being outcasts as long as they were in minority.
Re:Presence of Restoration Effects in These Subjec (Score:3, Interesting)
Anectdote:
A friend of mine feels fine on 5 hours a night, and can do that indefinitely. 6 is a really, really restful 9 to him. He can't even force himself to do 8 hours unless he's been up more than 24. Sounds about like the people in the study--no coffee or anything like that necessary, he simply doesn't need or even want more sleep than that.
Bastard gets so much done. It's amazing how much extra reading/video-game-playing/movie watching you can get done with an extra 2-3 hours every day, in the early morning or late at night when no-one's awake to bother you. Irritates his wife, though, because she wants him to go to sleep when she does (early), so his "bonus" time for the last year or so has shifted from being late at night to early in the morning. He just gets up way earlier than she does.
He's got a crazy-fast metabolism, and he's a bit on the short side (5'5" or so). No signs of his sleep patterns changing nor his metabolisms slowing yet, but he's only 24, so who knows. Smart as hell, as in top 2-3% of the population smart.
Re:The 8 Year Club (Score:2, Interesting)
I tried a similar experiment in college. Wanted to see how long I could go without any sleep whatsoever. Well, it was exams week and I had four tough classes, so that contributed to the urgency of the experiment. I've never needed a LOT of sleep anyway, so I wanted to see how long I could sustain a constant waking state.
Anyway, what I discovered at the time was that I could function pretty well for about 5 days with no sleep. As long as I got plenty of water and ate well (healthy foods, no "quick burn" sugars, etc), I felt reasonably functional. Easily functional enough to do well on my exams and manage the 1/2 hour drive back and forth between school and work. If I ate sugary crap or had even a little caffeine, it helped in the short term but the sugar crash and/or caffeine letdown was really rough.
I found that concentrating on something really helped. While driving, I'd examine the cars around me and count random attributes about them, or review what I was studying in my head by doing random math problems with the license plate numbers, or whatever. Studying dry material was hard, but I'd take frequent short breaks and draw or read for short periods.
However, as the days progressed, even an intense focus on things had a gradually decreasing effect. The night after exams, I managed to get through my work shift at my second job but even doing everything I could to be focusing on something interesting, I found my thought processes wandering. After work, I went home and slept 24 hours straight, and had a mild headache and a kind of "hangover" feeling for about 2 days.
Today, 20+ years later, I don't know how well I'd fare on the experiment. I routinely get about 6 hours of sleep (fall asleep around 1AM, wake up at 7), with occasional nights in the 7-9 hour range (maybe once a week. if I can manage to fall asleep earlier than 1AM, which is rare). I am relatively functional with as little as 3 hours of sleep for a night or two, but I'm much better off with 6.
I seem to go through "cycles" every couple of months where I can only manage to fall asleep late (1:30AM or so), then later and later until I'm down to 2-3 hours, then I "crash" to 9 hours for a night, then reset to about 6 for a while, then after some time it starts getting shorter again. When the insomnia cycle start hitting, I find myself depressed and unmotivated, then it gets really bad immediately after the "crash", then I get my equilibrium once I reestablish the 6-hour cycle again.
I have had to do "all nighters" recently and I don't feel a profound lack of sleep, but I don't know if I could maintain it for anything longer than a night or two any more and still feel functional.
Worst X-Men Movie Ever. (Score:3, Interesting)
The story of Red-Eye, who battles evil by hoping they'll nod off before he does.
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Employment Adjustments (Score:4, Interesting)
A Toyota shop near me introduced 30h working week for it staff. They kept the same pay but worked 6h days instead of 8h. Guess what productivity went up, the shop had longer opening hours 12h (2 shift) vs 8h (1 shift). People got sick less, fewer mistakes were done, customers were happier and revenue went up.