It's not just the amount of sleep that determines if you're an elite sleeper. Your environment, job or school schedule, diet, and even your personality are all factors, Dr. Ptacek says. For example, if you usually sleep five hours a night but drink coffee or tea during the day to keep yourself awake, Dr. Fu says that you're probably not an elite sleeper. Same goes for those who force themselves to stay up late working, studying, or watching Netflix.
The researchers have actually discovered five genes related to elite-sleeper tendencies — and they believe that more are out there. Dr. Fu estimates that"one in a few thousand" people have these elite-sleeper tendencies."It's not super common," she says, but"it's not extremely rare either."Being able to sleep less than most people without feeling groggy or cranky the next day is definitely a plus. But Dr. Fu and Dr.
What's more, the recent study focuses on whether the genetic mutations that predispose people to sleep less might also provide protection from diseases, such as Alzheimer's. The study was done on mice, allowing the researchers to breed mice with the elite-sleeper gene and genes that predisposed them to Alzheimer's.
Dr. Ptacek believes this study can help experts come up with new ways to prevent neurodegenerative diseases."If we can improve the efficiency of sleep and the quality of sleep, then we're not going to be trying to fix a brain after a lot of neurons have died, but rather trying to preserve the brain function for longer and delaying the onset," he explains.
In the future, we might see treatment, possibly a medication, that uses our knowledge of elite sleepers to help us"go into a deeper, more efficient, more restful sleep," Dr. Ptacek says. Those therapies would ideally come without the problems that some sleeping pills have, such as grogginess and, in more serious cases,
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