Sleeping little and staying fit: what DNA could explain

While some people need to sleep through the night and enjoy uninterrupted rest to feel their best, you can sleep just a few hours and have boundless energy from morning till night. You've never experienced sleeping in and you don't even have a sleep debt. Scientists believe this is a gift (or a burden) of genetics.

A genetic mutation is responsible

Your friends and family see you as an alien and suspect you're taking the opposite of sleeping pills. They need five alarms to get out of bed and groan in annoyance with every ring . They sleep until dawn and get the same amount of sleep as growing teenagers. If they were to be reincarnated, they would undoubtedly take the form of groundhogs.

While everyone else is snoring, you're already busy with your day and going about your business. You wake up at the crack of dawn before the sun even rises, and you don't have a single dark circle under your eyes. Far from being sleepy or foggy-headed , you're fully ready to go for a hike or run a marathon.

You've already tried sleeping longer, at least to follow the doctors' recommendations, but to no avail. It's almost torture waiting on the mattress, hoping Morpheus will catch you. However, this nocturnal resistance has its advantages. You recover very easily from a sleepless night and regularly wake up before your alarm, while others can barely stay awake despite pints of coffee .

And this characteristic, which helped you a lot during your student years and university nights, is a rarity. You belong to the very small percentage (between 1 and 3%) of people who only need six hours of sleep or less. In the scientific community, you even have a nickname: the "short sleepers." The reason for this difference? A genetic mutation.

Too much sleep kills sleep

We often hear that you absolutely need eight hours of sleep a night to be healthy… but the reality is a bit more nuanced. Researchers have discovered that some people are naturally programmed to sleep less and still feel perfectly fine. This explains why you're as lively as a bug while others are dragging their feet.

Dr. Ying-Hui Fu and his team have identified rare genetic mutations that influence our internal clock, the so-called circadian rhythm. For example, some people possess a variation of a gene that allows them to function perfectly well on just six hours of sleep, without fatigue or any negative impact on their health. Others, even rarer, can even manage with just four hours a night.

But be warned: these cases remain exceptional. Even if many people sleep little, it doesn't necessarily mean they emerge unscathed. For the vast majority of us, reducing our sleep time is not without consequences, even if we feel like we're "coping."

This information should not be generalized.

While some people seem to have a natural ability to get up early without suffering the rest of the day, this is still the exception. It's a superpower of the human body, but it's far from the norm. You can be a "morning person" but nod off during the afternoon soap opera or show signs of drowsiness at your desk.

In a society that views late risers as lazy and praises "miracle mornings"—those "wellness" routines that begin at dawn—we almost feel guilty about getting up at eight o'clock. To comply with this demand, which doesn't benefit night owls, we impose a rhythm on ourselves and condition our bodies, even though they are sometimes already overloaded. It's our "survival" mode that makes us think we are "forces of nature."

Midday fatigue, irritability, difficulty concentrating, or uncontrollable cravings: our bodies are trying to tell us something, but we need to listen. Even those who don't need much sleep should pay attention to these indicators to avoid mistaking fleeting energy for lasting balance. Rather than trying to replicate idealized routines, the goal is to find our own rhythm—the one that allows us to get up without struggling, get through the day without exhausting ourselves, and fall asleep instantly.