Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says. Those who make the initial screening wear monitors to track their sleep patterns at home. Potential candidates for the gene study are sent multiple questionnaires and undergo a long structured phone interview. Now Fu and his colleagues are recruiting more potential short sleepers for a larger genetic study. ( More on : Sleepy America: Are You Getting Enough Rest at Night?) When that genetic tweak was replicated in mice, they slept less too. Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California, San Francisco, who discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a mother-daughter pair of short sleepers in 2009. Sometimes short sleeping begins in childhood and runs in families: Beck reports on the work of Dr. They tend to be upbeat, optimistic and outgoing. What the few researchers studying the phenomenon have figured out to date is that naturally short sleepers routinely get six hours or less a night and function well, without being tired. There isn’t much data on these short sleepers, in part because they’re hard to find they don’t typically seek treatment, since they don’t think of their sleep habits as unusual or disordered. That said, the elusive corps of sleepless elite does indeed exist, the Journal‘s Melinda Beck reports: they make up a scant 1% to 3% of the population. ( More on : 5 Ways Daylight Savings May Be Bad For Your Health) They’re merely sleep-deprived - regularly getting less than the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night - and possibly putting themselves at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems. Many is the hard-charging corporate climber who claims to thrive on four or five hours a night, while the rest of us weaklings wallow in our beauty sleep.īut according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, most people who believe they’re naturally “short sleepers” aren’t really. But, she also found multiple genes associated with short-sleeping, and so we now also believe that this ability (or disorder as some like to call it) is genetic.Follow many Americans, sleeplessness is a matter of pride. She theorized that people are either early risers, night owls or something in the middle. A biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, by the name of Ying-Hui Fu started studying people with this gene just over 20 years ago.įu discovered what we already know as widely accepted common sense. Though it may seem anecdotal, there is a building body of evidence supporting a short-sleeping gene.
Though the percentage of the total number of people who fall into this category is small (about 1% of the population), they’re at a pretty distinct advantage because they can get by with just four to six hours per night.
In other parts of the world, The Thatcher Gene is simply referred to as being a “short sleeper.” This term refers to the amount of time one sleeps per night, not their height, of course. It’s being attributed to a gene that people in the UK refer to as “ The Thatcher Gene,” based on Margaret Thatcher’s sleeping habits of getting just four hours per night of rest. Trump may be part of a group called the “sleepless elite.” People who belong in this category can get by and even thrive with a fraction of the sleep that normal people get.
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