Rare genetic mutation allows some people to thrive on 4 hours of sleep, study suggests

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FILE - An airplane passenger waiting for her flight sleeps in the terminal gate area at Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

To most people, getting just four hours of sleep sounds ghastly, but for a few rare individuals, three or four hours of sleep is just fine.

Researchers have found that a rare genetic condition may allow some people to thrive on as little as three hours of sleep, according to a study published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences earlier this month. 

SIK3-N783Y mutation

It’s advised that adult humans should get anywhere between seven and nine hours of sleep to allow themselves to function, according to the National Institute of Health.

This latest mutation is just one of several believed to be linked to some people’s ability to sleep less and function normally. 

The backstory:

Studies conducted in the 2000s analyzed people who slept six hours or less each night.

Ying-Hui Fu, the latest study’s co-author and a neuroscientist and geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, and her team found a rare genetic mutation in a mother and daughter.

The mutation was found in the gene that helps regulate the internal clock responsible for a human’s sleep-wake cycle, which is also known as our circadian rhythm, according to Nature.

Following this discovery, more people who also slept a few hours reached out to the research team. This led to Fu and her colleagues identifying five mutations in four genes that could contribute to this sleep trait, including this latest one. 

What they're saying:

"Our bodies continue to work when we go to bed", Fu told Nature. "These people, all these functions our bodies are doing while we are sleeping, they can just perform at a higher level than we can."

In previous studies, the Sik3 gene was previously linked to sleepiness, but this newest gene variation appears to combat that. 

Mice show promising results

Dig deeper:

Researchers genetically modified mice to carry the specified mutation that was believed to be linked to needing less sleep.

The mice needed about 31 minutes less sleep a day than the mice that didn’t carry the mutation.

"This suggests that the mutation might shorten sleep by supporting brain homeostasis — a theory that sleep helps to reset the brain," Fu told Nature. 

What's next:

Researchers hope to continue looking into this genetic mutation and its variants to see how it impacts sleep.