We all know that the doctor recommends between seven to nine hours of sleep for adults looking to live a healthy lifestyle. But is that true for everyone?
Recent research from Dr. Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California San Francisco has shown that the advent of the "short sleep" gene is upon us. This means that there are "natural short sleepers" among us that benefit from a gene mutation which allows them to live healthy lives, despite only needing four to six hours of sleep each night.
These short sleepers tend to be active, don't need to rely on coffee... and even report having really amazing memory and speaking many languages. These individuals have remained healthy over an extended period of 15 years that they were studied.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that all of us can start sleeping four hours a night and expect to be ready to take on the day. In fact, it's quite the opposite, as most humans should expect a significant decrease in their performance capacity.
Unlike people with the short sleep gene, if you're tossing and turning during the night, that's going to make for an uneasy and unproductive morning. Make the most of your time asleep and find the perfect pillow for how YOU sleep.
Luckily, Dr. Fu is continuing his research in an effort to understand how we can all sleep more efficiently. Until we learn more, we're going to focus on those components of our sleep that we can control — like your pillow — and who knows, maybe we'll all have the "gift" of a mutated short sleep gene one day.
Read more here.