Biologically, a lot happens when we are asleep, and most bodies need about eight hours to get it all done.
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"Your body needs that time to do all the work that it needs to do for you to stay healthy, whether it's removing toxins or waste products or generating more energy or repairing the damages that you acquire when you are awake," Dr. Ying-Hui Fu, Professor of Neurology at UCSF, told KCBS Radio's "As Prescribed."
For more than a decade, Fu and her study co-author, Dr. Louis Ptacek, have been studying people who naturally only need as little as four hours of sleep.
It turns out these "Familial Natural Short Sleepers" have a genetic mutation that allows their bodies to accomplish everything they need to in a shorter amount of time. They may be getting even better quality rest than people who sleep for twice as long.
"Say, now I sleep eight hours, but my sleep efficiency is only 90%. So, on a long-term basis I still am not getting my best sleep," Fu explained. "But with Natural Short Sleepers we know their sleep is probably approaching 100 percent efficiency - 98 or very high efficiency."
Their study even found that when they applied the Short Sleep genetic mutation to mice, the onset of Alzheimer's disease was delayed.
Fu is hoping to apply this finding to treatments.
"If we can figure out why their sleep is so efficient, we can try to develop a drug or something that we can help everybody to get the most efficient sleep that they can get. That way, we can all stay healthy longer," she said.
Her overall advice is that when it comes to sleep, you should listen to your body.
"Sleep duration is important, but timing is also important," she said. "So, you need to figure out what is the best time for you to go to bed and what is the best time for you to get up. Listen to your body to see how many hours of sleep you need."
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