Numerous scientific studies have shown the negative effects of sleep deprivation. But few studies have analyzed the sleep quality of naturally short sleepers — people who can get by on less than 6 hours of sleep with no alarm clock and no adverse effects.
In a somewhat geeky attempt to overturn the oversimplified “8-hour advice”, I’ve spent lots of time researching articles that dig deeper into the nuances of sleep duration.
After all, what would you do with 9 extra work weeks per year? 9 work weeks is what you would gain if you found a way to naturally reduce your sleep need by 1 hour each day.
Anyway, a couple older studies suggest that naturally short sleepers tend to exhibit more efficient sleep. That means they spend less time in light stages of sleep and more time in deep stages of sleep.
One 1970 study compared groups of short sleepers to normal and long sleepers:
Short sleepers showed a pattern that may be interpreted as more “efficent.” Less time was spent in light sleep and awakenings. Their reduced stage 3 suggests that they made the transition from stage 2 to stage 4 more readily, since stage 3 is essentially a mixed stage 2 and stage 4 record. They received as much stage 4 or REM sleep, generally considered as need stages, as did the [normal] sleepers, although they slept 1 hr and 15 min less.
Conversely, for the long sleepers (9+ hours)…
On the other hand the long sleep group showed marked increases in REM sleep and in stage 2 sleep when compared with the control group, increases of 53 and 36 percent, respectively. The large relative increase in stage REM would reflect a continuation of the intrasleep cycling previously noted, in which REM occurs as a prominent aspect of the later part of the natural sleep process.
Put another way: long sleepers experience more REM because REM tends to occur in the morning hours of sleep.
To me, this suggests that to reduce sleep need, it’s entirely viable to work on factors to improve sleep efficiency. Things like exercise and diet and even meditation are known to improve the amount of stage 3 and 4 sleep (i.e. deep sleep).
Personally, I find short sleep very attractive. I love having more hours in the day. But I have yet to rule out long sleep. Lots of research has been done on REM sleep and memory consolidation — could more REM make you smarter? I don’t know, but I have heard that Einstein was a 10-hour sleeper……
“One 1970 study compared groups of short sleepers to normal and long sleepers”
Are there any other current latest studies/research?
Does this findings still holds true? Maybe with an extra 38 years of more data, new findings may have surfaced.
Most research I could find on naturally short sleep has been from the late 60s and 70s, and only from a few researchers.
Most current research studies the effects of chronic sleep deprivation–what happens when you take an 8-hour sleeper and make her sleep for 4-h a night for a week?
I suspect that the various red tape surrounding science research has something to do with it:
1. It’s easier to get funding for research showing how shortened sleep is bad.
2. Scientists, for publication reasons, tend towards drastic and highly significant results. Studying the nuances of 7-h vs 8-h vs 9-h aren’t very interesting from a publication standpoint (but certainly are from a personal lifestyle standpoint).
3. Long term research is what’s needed for studying naturally short sleep. Long term studies are more difficult, time-consuming (duh), and more costly.
I certainly have not exhausted the sleep literature, so if anyone finds more recent studies on naturally short vs. naturally long sleep, contact me.