Original subtitles

[Music]

how many hours of sleep per night does a

human being need to be healthy

i bet you've answered eight hours but

that's not quite true according to

recent scientific findings

this is misunderstood that's like saying

everybody should be 5 feet 10 inches

tall and if you're shorter than 510

you've got a problem not all of us need

the same amount of sleep to be well

rested and function at a high level

and it's not a matter of behavior or

choice it's in the genes

some people are genetically designed to

be what is called natural short sleepers

this means they only need four to six

hours of sleep per night and still wake

up feeling fresh

others have called these folks elite

sleepers and i think it makes sense

they get by with much less sleep and

still perform at a high level and it is

true that it is a real asset in today's

work world

[Music]

for the past 25 years dr patasek and his

team have been analyzing the sleeping

patterns of over a hundred families in

the beginning all of our work was really

focused on trying to figure out

what the diagnostic criteria should be

to call someone i'm you know a familial

advanced sleep phase person an advanced

sleeping phase person is also known as a

morning lark

someone that goes to bed early and wakes

up early

some people came to our attention who

were extreme morning larks but who

stayed up too late to meet our criteria

it became clear to us then that

there were

families that were morning larks yes but

they were also night owls and that's

when we had this idea that perhaps

these families have something different

and that is natural short sleep that

allows them to wake up early and to stay

up

so far four genes related to natural

short sleep were identified

but it's likely to be more

the challenge is these genes are quite

rare

dr petarsek estimates that only one

person in a thousand is an elite sleeper

the good news is that they might unlock

the secrets and sleep efficiency for all

of us

we have a very strong impression that

these folks are

healthier than average

we have

measured using questionnaires measured

people's resilience and natural short

sleepers score much higher on resilience

scales than non-short sleepers these

people are sleeping

so much less and they're still doing

well that maybe they're sleeping more

efficiently

and then the question is what does that

mean

we might be getting closer to this

answer

in a new study natural short sleep genes

were introduced in mice with alzheimer's

disease and the animals became more

resilient

this is very exciting because it

suggests that we might be able to target

that

biology

for therapeutic use not just with regard

to neurodegenerative diseases but

psychiatric diseases diabetes obesity

many cancers

i view this as a large jigsaw puzzle

there's a picture of sleep in a jigsaw

puzzle but we don't know what the

picture is so what we've got is these

families and in every family where we

can identify a gene

and a genetic variant and show that it

is actually causing that trait we're

still very much in a discovery process

trying to find as many pieces to the

puzzle as we can

for something that most of us spend a

third of our lives doing there's still a

lot to understand about sleep

something is happening when we're

sleeping that allow us to

restore our functions to wake up the

next day and perform

well if we could do that better by

understanding

how sleep

efficiency is regulated and we think

this could have a huge impact

on human health

[Music]

you