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Why Can Some People Function on Less Sleep Than Others? · So That's Why

• 0:04
  Jenny Oliver: Welcome to the So That's Why Podcast, where we unpack the
• 0:07
  science behind everyday questions.
• 0:10
  I'm Jen.
• 0:11
  Chris Smith: I'm Chris.
• 0:12
  Matt Edmundson: And I'm Matt.
• 0:13
  Jenny Oliver: And today we're looking at why can some people
• 0:16
  function on less sleep than others?
• 0:19
  I know people who roll outta bed after four hours sleep looking totally refreshed
• 0:23
  while I need a solid eight hours.
• 0:25
  Otherwise, I look like a zombie.
• 0:27
  Matt Edmundson: I'm not saying anything.
• 0:29
  Uh, so, but I know what you mean, right?
• 0:31
  I, the, the, the guys that sort of bounce into work at 7:00 AM chirping
• 0:34
  good morning, uh, after staying.
• 0:37
  I can't do that twice after staying up until, you know, like two in the morning.
• 0:42
  Meanwhile.
• 0:42
  I've got seven and a half hours sleep and I'm still questioning my life
• 0:46
  choices after my third dose of caffeine.
• 0:48
  You know?
• 0:49
  Jenny Oliver: Exactly.
• 0:49
  There's this whole culture where sleep deprivation is worn like a badge of honor.
• 0:54
  I only need five hours.
• 0:56
  I'm just a built different,
• 0:58
  Chris Smith: well, what is fascinating is some people genuinely are built
• 1:02
  different, but we are talking about less than 1% of the population that
• 1:07
  actually have these genetic mutations.
• 1:09
  The rest.
• 1:11
  The more likely kind of kid themselves.
• 1:12
  That's no offense to anybody by the way.
• 1:14
  Jenny Oliver: Wait, genetic mutations, are we talking like superhuman abilities?
• 1:19
  Chris Smith: Legitimate superhuman abilities.
• 1:21
  So these are legitimate biological differences.
• 1:24
  So there are specific gene variants that fundamentally alter how your
• 1:28
  brain processes sleep cycles.
• 1:30
  So these people with this ability, this mutation, if you like, they
• 1:34
  don't just cope with less sleep, they actually need less while maintaining
• 1:38
  the same perfect cognitive function.
• 1:40
  Matt Edmundson: Okay, so someone claiming they don't need sleep
• 1:43
  might actually then be genetically different, is what we're saying.
• 1:47
  Chris Smith: They might be, but they would also be one of the
• 1:49
  rarest humans on the planet.
• 1:51
  But far more likely there's someone who's just accumulated massive
• 1:55
  sleep debt and they don't realize how impaired they actually are
• 1:59
  Jenny Oliver: because you know, after just 24 hours without sleep,
• 2:02
  your brain function, it does drop to a similar level to someone who's.
• 2:07
  Little bit drunk.
• 2:07
  Right?
• 2:08
  Matt Edmundson: That explains a lot then Like half the startup founders that I know
• 2:12
  that brag about getting four hours sleep, they're basically running on fumes, right?
• 2:18
  They're running their companies on fumes or slightly pickled,
• 2:20
  but that's another story.
• 2:22
  Chris Smith: Yeah, for most, they probably are running those
• 2:23
  companies on, on fumes or pickled.
• 2:26
  Um, so basically, you know, people with a four hour sleep schedule,
• 2:30
  in the most cases it's probably not something to brag about.
• 2:32
  Jenny Oliver: And I've been feeling an adequate based on genetic anomalies.
• 2:36
  It's like me trying to compare my running speed to Usain Bolts.
• 2:40
  Chris Smith: Yeah, I like that.
• 2:41
  Um, so if we look at some research.
• 2:44
  There was, there was some, a study done evolving, I think it was 5,000 people
• 2:48
  or over 5,000 people, and it showed us that after one night of four to six hours
• 2:52
  sleep, your reaction time slows by 50%.
• 2:56
  But what's more, your working memory drops by 40% and your ability to
• 3:00
  form new memories also decreases by the same level of about 40%.
• 3:03
  Matt Edmundson: So I guess then huge.
• 3:04
  Oh, it is massive.
• 3:05
  Right?
• 3:05
  So it means that we don't realize how, how impaired we actually are.
• 3:09
  Jenny Oliver: Well, exactly.
• 3:09
  'cause your brain adapts to feeling tired.
• 3:11
  So you think you're functioning normally when you are actually functioning.
• 3:15
  Like you've had several drinks, it's got a name, sleep debt.
• 3:19
  Matt Edmundson: Sleep debt.
• 3:20
  Jenny Oliver: Mm-hmm.
• 3:21
  Matt Edmundson: You can get a MasterCard for that.
• 3:23
  Um, what about people then who, who do genuinely seem fine, right?
• 3:27
  Like, I've got a mate.
• 3:28
  Can sleep four or five hours a night.
• 3:30
  They like to run.
• 3:31
  They work hard.
• 3:32
  He is got a pretty successful career.
• 3:35
  Chris Smith: Well, he might be one of these, you know, natural short sleepers,
• 3:38
  these ones with the genetic mutation, but that would make him very rare.
• 3:43
  So it's more likely he is a sleep debt accumulator sleep.
• 3:47
  Jenny Oliver: I love that.
• 3:48
  Chris Smith: So this is someone whose body's adapted to this chronic
• 3:51
  restriction, but they could be like paying hidden health costs.
• 3:55
  So whereas that one group, those genetic mutants have that genetic protection.
• 4:01
  The other, the sleep debt accumulators are actually kind of slowly
• 4:04
  increasing their risk of diabetes, of heart disease, even early death,
• 4:09
  Jenny Oliver: because it's important, isn't it?
• 4:10
  During sleep, your brain doesn't shut down, it just goes into like
• 4:14
  maintenance mode and your brain cells shrink by 60%, and that just gives
• 4:19
  your brain time to flush out the toxins, the waste products, including.
• 4:24
  The proteins they say now that cause Alzheimer's.
• 4:27
  Matt Edmundson: That's pretty impressive.
• 4:28
  Right.
• 4:29
  So I guess then, so when someone says they're too busy to sleep.
• 4:33
  They're saying they're too busy to let their brain in effect take out the trash.
• 4:37
  Mm. So I'm curious guys, like how did scientists even discover these
• 4:42
  genetic differences in the first place?
• 4:44
  Chris Smith: Yeah.
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  So in 2009 it was, there was uh, researchers at the University of
• 4:49
  California in San Francisco, and they discovered the first family with
• 4:54
  this natural short sleep syndrome.
• 4:56
  And it was a mother and daughter in this family that could require just 6.25 hours.
• 5:01
  Of sleep per night versus 8.06 hours for the other family members
• 5:06
  Jenny Oliver: in one family.
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  That's incredibly rare.
• 5:09
  Chris Smith: Exactly.
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  It's extraordinary.
• 5:10
  Yeah.
• 5:11
  The same family.
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  So what they did, this mother and daughter, they carried a mutation
• 5:15
  in what's known as the the deck two gene, and it affects the
• 5:18
  molecular clock in your brain.
• 5:20
  But since then, scientists have discovered other mutations in other
• 5:24
  genes that have these similar effects.
• 5:25
  But yeah, it was groundbreaking.
• 5:26
  Matt Edmundson: Wow.
• 5:27
  And it sounds like they, they won the genetic lottery.
• 5:30
  Um, except, well, I guess instead of the millions, they won the ability
• 5:33
  to function on a lot less sleep.
• 5:35
  Right.
• 5:35
  I
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  Jenny Oliver: think I'd take the millions just, just saying.
• 5:39
  Chris Smith: Yeah.
• 5:39
  I dunno which one's more useful.
• 5:40
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:40
  It's a good question.
• 5:41
  Chris Smith: Yeah.
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  But what makes these people like remarkable is they maintain.
• 5:45
  Normal sleep, what we call architecture.
• 5:47
  So what I mean is their brains cycle through the same stages as the rest of us.
• 5:52
  Just more efficiently with less, uh, over the, that shorter time,
• 5:55
  Jenny Oliver: right?
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  'cause sleep's got distinct stages, doesn't it?
• 5:58
  So stage one is the light transition stage.
• 6:01
  Stage two is where you spend about 45% of your night when you sleep.
• 6:07
  Spindles, yes.
• 6:08
  Sleep spindles, block external stimuli so you can rest,
• 6:12
  Matt Edmundson: sleep spindles to honestly just makes me think stairs.
• 6:16
  Sleep
• 6:17
  Jenny Oliver: and beauty.
• 6:17
  I think sleep and beauty,
• 6:18
  Matt Edmundson: gee.
• 6:19
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:19
  Well, yeah, no, I get that.
• 6:20
  Yeah.
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  Yeah, I get it.
• 6:21
  Just makes me think of the spindles in my staircase.
• 6:23
  Chris Smith: I'd probably more call sleep spindles, like your brain security system.
• 6:26
  Matt Edmundson: That's probably better.
• 6:27
  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
• 6:28
  Chris Smith: Well, it's a bit less boring than the sta The stairs is quite boring,
• 6:30
  but actually where, where the real magic happens in sleep is stage three.
• 6:35
  And this is deep sleep.
• 6:36
  And as Jen mentioned earlier, this is where your brain cells
• 6:39
  physically shrink by 60%.
• 6:42
  Literally allowing that waste removal from your brain.
• 6:44
  Okay.
• 6:45
  Jenny Oliver: And REM sleep, not the band.
• 6:48
  REM sleeps where your brain transfers information from your temporary
• 6:52
  storage in one part of your brain to the permanent storage in your cortex.
• 6:56
  You miss the rem and you can't form long-term memories properly.
• 7:00
  Chris Smith: Mm-hmm.
• 7:01
  Matt Edmundson: So when I guess someone claims then that they're
• 7:03
  fine, you know, on the four or five hours, they're potentially missing
• 7:07
  entire stages of this, right.
• 7:10
  Chris Smith: Exactly, and that's the key thing.
• 7:12
  So that's the biggest difference.
• 7:13
  So these natural short sleepers, they complete all cycles efficiently,
• 7:17
  whereas a sleep deprived person doesn't.
• 7:21
  Jenny Oliver: So what about people that think they've
• 7:22
  adapted to less sleep over time?
• 7:25
  Chris Smith: Yeah, so I'm sorry.
• 7:25
  Again, I'm like the, you know, the Prince of Dark that's
• 7:28
  given all these things about
• 7:29
  Jenny Oliver: the MythBuster
• 7:29
  Matt Edmundson: MythBuster.
• 7:30
  Chris Smith: But um, I'm afraid it is a myth.
• 7:33
  Um.
• 7:34
  It's one of the biggest myths in sleep science actually.
• 7:36
  So multiple studies have shown that while you might feel less acutely
• 7:39
  tired, your performance will continue to deteriorate because it's just that
• 7:43
  your brain becomes numb to its own impairment through sleep deprivation.
• 7:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:47
  Matt Edmundson: So I guess it's a bit like altitude sickness, right?
• 7:49
  So you stop feeling nauseous, but your blood oxygen levels, they're
• 7:52
  still really quite dangerously low.
• 7:54
  Jenny Oliver: Mm-hmm.
• 7:54
  Yeah, so with, with the absence of trials, how can we identify
• 7:59
  genuine genetics, short sleepers?
• 8:02
  Chris Smith: Yeah, so these people typically maintain these patterns
• 8:04
  from childhood and they're, they're often people that, you know, they
• 8:07
  don't need caffeine to function.
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  They don't crash on weekends and like really noticeably when
• 8:12
  they're given the opportunity to sleep longer, like on a holiday.
• 8:15
  They just don't, they just naturally wake up at the same time anyway, their
• 8:18
  usual kind of short period of sleep.
• 8:20
  Matt Edmundson: Okay, so what about age?
• 8:23
  How does that affect sleep?
• 8:24
  Jenny Oliver: Well, I've, I mean, I've noticed this myself.
• 8:26
  Our sleep needs definitely change as we get older.
• 8:30
  Um, apparently older adults spend less time in deep sleep, but more
• 8:34
  in lighter stages, and that explains why we wake more in the night.
• 8:39
  But I guess natural short sleepers maintain their
• 8:42
  efficiency, so nothing changes.
• 8:44
  Matt Edmundson: Okay.
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  So.
• 8:46
  Yeah.
• 8:46
  How do we then distinguish, right, if, like how do we distinguish a genuine
• 8:52
  short sleeper from, I don't know, people powered by caffeine in real life?
• 8:57
  Jenny Oliver: Well, think about Margaret Thatcher.
• 8:59
  She claimed she only needed four hours sleep when she was Prime Minister,
• 9:03
  and she was held up as proof that successful people don't need much sleep.
• 9:08
  Chris Smith: I know.
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  And that, that proof was always a bit uncertain.
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  I mean, let, let's be honest, you know, she developed dementia lately in life.
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  Now obviously we can't prove.
• 9:15
  Causation of that dementia, but it's well known that, uh, sleep deprivation
• 9:19
  is a significant dementia risk factor.
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  So if you compare that to natural short sleepers in laboratory
• 9:25
  studies, they maintain that perfect cognitive function, so they're not
• 9:28
  getting that same dementia risk.
• 9:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:30
  Matt Edmundson: So the Iron Lady then might have been
• 9:32
  functioning on fumes rather.
• 9:35
  Superhuman genetics.
• 9:37
  Chris Smith: Well, I can tell you if she was running on fumes, it wouldn't have
• 9:39
  been in the Northeast where I'm from.
• 9:40
  'cause she switched everything off and there were no fumes.
• 9:42
  But that's for another day.
• 9:45
  Matt Edmundson: Not getting political.
• 9:46
  Chris Smith: No.
• 9:47
  Jenny Oliver: So what about teenagers?
• 9:48
  They genuinely need like eight to 10 hours sleep there.
• 9:52
  They're biologically programmed to stay up later and sleep later.
• 9:56
  I mean, I, I know this from having teenagers in the house.
• 9:59
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah, you and me both.
• 10:00
  Like forcing my teenager to get up at six in the morning
• 10:02
  like we're going on holiday.
• 10:03
  It is like forcing an adult to wake up at four in the morning, right?
• 10:07
  Jenny Oliver: Yeah.
• 10:07
  And it explains why getting them up for bed, you know, you have to, you have
• 10:10
  to do it in several stages, don't you?
• 10:11
  To wake them for school.
• 10:13
  Chris Smith: Yeah, totally.
• 10:14
  Some things will never change.
• 10:15
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
• 10:16
  Chris Smith: So moving around fact, fans, here's something interesting for you.
• 10:20
  Before the industrial Revolution, people routinely practice what
• 10:23
  was known as biphasic sleep.
• 10:25
  So what would happen is you'd have a first sleep between about eight
• 10:28
  o'clock at night and midnight then.
• 10:30
  You'd have this period of, let's call it quiet wakefulness, and
• 10:33
  then a second sleep until dawn.
• 10:36
  Matt Edmundson: So our modern eight hour block then might be
• 10:39
  sort of historically abnormal.
• 10:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:41
  Some people, uh, you know, like worrying about getting up in the middle
• 10:45
  of the night might be experiencing just their natural pattern.
• 10:48
  Jenny Oliver: Mm-hmm.
• 10:50
  So what about demanding jobs like doctors, emergency workers,
• 10:54
  parents with newborns that.
• 10:56
  Have to sleep differently, don't they?
• 10:58
  Chris Smith: I know that's probably the hardest job of the lot, isn't it?
• 11:00
  But yeah, these professions show how challenging, you know,
• 11:03
  extreme sleep deprivation can be.
• 11:05
  So medical residents often work well full 24 hour shifts, don't they?
• 11:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:10
  But research has shown that after that long without sleep, anybody's
• 11:15
  cognitive function and reaction time can drop by 40 to 50%.
• 11:19
  Which is rather frightening when you think of people in, you know,
• 11:23
  surgical jobs and whatever else.
• 11:25
  But the medical profession thankfully, has recognized this and that's why
• 11:28
  like hospitals are implementing much better scheduling, you know, for fatty
• 11:32
  fatigue management and protocols.
• 11:34
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:35
  Well it makes you realize, isn't it, that by pushing through exhaustion, it's
• 11:38
  maybe not, maybe isn't a superpower.
• 11:41
  Um, maybe it's a bit crazy to, I don't know, like running a marathon in
• 11:45
  concrete booth doesn't make sense, right.
• 11:47
  Jenny Oliver: I've heard that.
• 11:48
  Um, speaking of running, I've heard professional athletes, uh, often sleep
• 11:52
  like nine to 10 hours a night plus naps.
• 11:55
  I mean, I dunno about you, but I'm jealous.
• 11:58
  Chris Smith: No, totally.
• 11:58
  And sometimes more.
• 11:59
  So, Roger Federer famously talked about how he slept 12 hours nightly at his peak.
• 12:04
  So for these athletes, it, it's not just a, a nice thing, it's, it's a
• 12:08
  critical part of their routine because more sleep means better performance.
• 12:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 12:11
  Fewer injuries, longer careers.
• 12:13
  Matt Edmundson: Mm-hmm.
• 12:14
  Jenny Oliver: So we know we've all got different sleep needs.
• 12:17
  How do we figure out what's right for us?
• 12:20
  Chris Smith: So the best thing to do is like try and pay attention to
• 12:22
  your natural patterns when you are not forced into artificial schedules.
• 12:27
  So what I mean by that is if you could sleep whenever you wanted for
• 12:32
  two weeks, no alarms, no nothing, what would your pattern look like?
• 12:36
  Matt Edmundson: Oh, that's a, that's a good question, isn't it?
• 12:38
  Um, like what happens, I guess when I'm on holiday, you know,
• 12:41
  and, and not setting alarms and.
• 12:44
  Uh, surviving on OJ and Caffeine
• 12:47
  , Jenny Oliver: I bet you crash for about 10 hours at the start, and then
• 12:50
  you probably settle into something a bit more reasonable and that crash is
• 12:55
  you paying back your sleep debt and probably after you've, you, you've
• 12:58
  recovered from that, you probably go into a nice natural pattern.
• 13:03
  Matt Edmundson: Okay.
• 13:03
  So well hopefully we'll find out one day.
• 13:07
  Chris Smith: Yeah.
• 13:07
  It might take a while to do
• 13:08
  Matt Edmundson: when you first get on holiday.
• 13:09
  Yeah.
• 13:10
  Yeah.
• 13:11
  I'm curious then if I've.
• 13:12
  You've been accumulating this sleep debt.
• 13:15
  I guess, what are some of the warning signs of chronic
• 13:18
  chronic sleep deprivation?
• 13:20
  How do, how do I recognize this?
• 13:22
  Chris Smith: Yeah.
• 13:22
  So if you're somebody that needs caffeine to function, that's a classic sign.
• 13:26
  But also I think people that fall asleep within minutes of lying down.
• 13:30
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:30
  Or you know, you sleep significantly longer on weekends or feel really
• 13:33
  groggy and needing time to kind of come around and wake up.
• 13:36
  They're all classic signs of sleep debt.
• 13:39
  Matt Edmundson: Okay.
• 13:39
  And does it matter, like where timing is concerned?
• 13:43
  Like the time I fall asleep, or the quantity, or is it
• 13:45
  just a quantity of sleep?
• 13:46
  Chris Smith: Timing matters enormously.
• 13:49
  So your body has what we would call its natural circadian preference.
• 13:53
  It's circadian rhythm.
• 13:55
  That's, you know, when you should be going to sleep and resting and, and rising.
• 13:58
  So you've got early rises versus night owl, and that is, it's real.
• 14:02
  You know, people who claim to be night owls sometimes get a bit of grief and
• 14:06
  people don't believe there are early rises, but it's, it's perfectly true.
• 14:09
  And fighting your natural kind of Ian rhythm is a bit like pushing water uphill.
• 14:13
  Yeah.
• 14:14
  Jenny Oliver: So this explains why my many efforts to try and
• 14:17
  be a morning person have failed.
• 14:19
  I've been fighting my biology.
• 14:21
  Chris Smith: That's it.
• 14:22
  You keep telling yourself that when you, when you're pushing
• 14:25
  that alarm back into the snoo
• 14:26
  Jenny Oliver: snooze.
• 14:27
  Yeah.
• 14:28
  Chris Smith: Um, the other thing that matters a lot is the environment.
• 14:30
  So if you're trying to get a sleep environment that's too warm or too
• 14:34
  noisy, or too bright, it's forcing your body to work harder during sleep.
• 14:39
  So, let's be honest, your bedroom should feel like a cave.
• 14:43
  Um, yeah.
• 14:45
  Man cave, I dunno.
• 14:46
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Chris Smith: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Um, but like a cool temperature around 16 to 20 degrees Celsius, which.
• 14:51
  Frow US viewers is about, uh, 60 to 67 degrees faite.
• 14:56
  If my conversion matter is about right, um, you need complete darkness,
• 15:01
  minimal noise, that that's the best conditions to try and get to sleep.
• 15:04
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I, I definitely need it cold like a window open or something.
• 15:07
  That's good.
• 15:07
  Jenny Oliver: Yeah, you need
• 15:07
  Matt Edmundson: too, but what about, um, what about supplements then?
• 15:11
  'cause obviously there's lots of supplements out there.
• 15:13
  Um, can they help us with eat quality?
• 15:16
  Chris Smith: Yeah, so while supplements can't help, like your total sleep needs,
• 15:20
  there are certain ingredients we can supplement with that will help with
• 15:23
  sleep quality and help you wind down.
• 15:25
  So things like magnesium are well known for relaxation, like muscle relaxation.
• 15:31
  But there, there's an ingredient from green tea called L-Theanine,
• 15:33
  which is really good for calmness and I, I guess, helping the brain to.
• 15:38
  To just calm down on an evening.
• 15:40
  Um, ashwagandha, very famous Herb is known for stress management, and
• 15:45
  we've got a supplement in Vegetology, of course, for sleep support.
• 15:47
  And we, we put these in there.
• 15:49
  So just trying to look at sleep and what are the different things that contribute
• 15:52
  to it, and can we take these things from nature and, uh, make good use of them.
• 15:57
  Jenny Oliver: And lots of people use melatonin.
• 15:59
  Don't need to help with the, the timing, like shifting the circadian rhythms,
• 16:03
  especially with jet lag or shift work.
• 16:05
  Chris Smith: Yeah, exactly.
• 16:06
  So yeah, melatonin again, it's supposed to try and help reset your body clock almost.
• 16:11
  Um, but quality sleep support works with your body rather than fighting against it.
• 16:17
  Um, so even though, you know, supplements won't turn you into one of those
• 16:21
  genetic short sleep, as I mentioned, but you know, we're not quite there yet.
• 16:25
  But they will help, they can help to, um, just give you a little
• 16:29
  boost, a little help along the way.
• 16:31
  Jenny Oliver: And so sleep connects to practically every other health aspect.
• 16:34
  If we get this foundation right, everything else will
• 16:37
  just function better, won't it?
• 16:39
  Chris Smith: You're right.
• 16:40
  It, it is literally affecting everything.
• 16:41
  So think about the immune system, your metabolism, um, emotional regulation, um,
• 16:47
  even down to your decision making ability.
• 16:49
  They're all directly impacted by sleep, I suppose.
• 16:53
  Just a little analogy.
• 16:54
  If you think of a house and its foundations, if they're a bit unstable,
• 16:58
  everything on tops a bit shaky.
• 16:59
  Mm. And it's the same, you know, if, if you're tired, everything kind of
• 17:02
  gets a little bit worse, doesn't it?
• 17:04
  Matt Edmundson: Which is interesting.
• 17:05
  Is it?
• 17:05
  'cause I think we all instinctively know this.
• 17:07
  I mean, just from, you know, we've been around a while.
• 17:10
  Right.
• 17:11
  Which makes me wonder, going back to what you said earlier,
• 17:13
  Jen, when did getting less sleep?
• 17:16
  Like become this huge badge of honor.
• 17:19
  Jenny Oliver: I think the shift happened, didn't it?
• 17:21
  When with industrialization, artificial lighting, so suddenly we could, we
• 17:25
  could work around the clock and society.
• 17:28
  We began valuing productivity over biology without even realizing the impact.
• 17:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:34
  Chris Smith: You're right.
• 17:35
  And I mean, you mentioned, you know, the badge of honor and people do talk it up
• 17:38
  like, you know, if you're an entrepreneur you've gotta be able to survive on,
• 17:41
  Matt Edmundson: or the hustle,
• 17:41
  the grind.
• 17:43
  Chris Smith: But it's so true.
• 17:43
  Like, you know, poor sleep affects everything.
• 17:45
  It affects mood, it affects relationships, your decision making,
• 17:48
  your career, sleep deprivation.
• 17:51
  It, it changes, you know, even your hunger and your satiety hormones.
• 17:55
  It makes you crave the wrong kinds of food, like, you know, high calorie foods.
• 17:58
  Definitely.
• 17:58
  When was the last time when you were tired, you wanted to eat a banana?
• 18:00
  You, you, you wanna eat a pizza, right?
• 18:02
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:03
  Pizza and kebabs, right?
• 18:04
  I mean, I, I'm guilty if I go back to my.
• 18:08
  Student years, which I appreciate was a while ago.
• 18:10
  Um, I would brag about pulling out, you know, the all-nighters,
• 18:14
  but what I'm hearing is probably what I was doing was making myself
• 18:17
  temporarily stupid and irritable.
• 18:19
  Now granted, I, I, I grant you, I do not need to pull an all-nighter to be
• 18:24
  temporarily stupid or irritable, but you know, the, the two are probably connected,
• 18:29
  Jenny Oliver: but many problems are actually sleep problems
• 18:32
  disguised as something else.
• 18:35
  Chris Smith: Totally.
• 18:35
  Yeah.
• 18:35
  So if you take, um, exercise for example, so sleep is when our muscles
• 18:41
  repair themselves and grow stronger.
• 18:43
  So without that adequate sleep, you don't get adequate recovery.
• 18:47
  Exercise becomes less effective and you become more injury prone.
• 18:51
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
• 18:51
  And it's, and also there's an interest in talking of problems.
• 18:54
  There's an interesting relationship between.
• 18:56
  Sleep deprivation and anxiety or depression isn't there?
• 18:59
  So those two things can be bidirectional.
• 19:01
  So sleep deprivation can trigger anxiety and depression, but if
• 19:06
  you're anxious or have depression, then it affects your sleep.
• 19:08
  You know, it becomes a catch 22.
• 19:10
  Chris Smith: Absolutely.
• 19:11
  Jenny Oliver: So what we're saying is understanding it are individual sleep
• 19:15
  needs isn't just about feeling rested, it's about optimizing our entire lives.
• 19:20
  So why can't some people function on less sleep while others seem fine?
• 19:26
  Chris Smith: Yeah, so going back to the start, it's because sleep
• 19:28
  needs are genetically determined.
• 19:29
  So we've got less than 1% of the population carrying these
• 19:33
  mutations that allow them to genuinely thrive on minimum sleep.
• 19:38
  The vast majority of us claiming to function fine.
• 19:40
  Are chronically impaired and just don't realize it.
• 19:42
  And let's be honest, kind of kidding themselves.
• 19:44
  Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
• 19:44
  So those colleagues that do come band into good morning, uh, I
• 19:48
  apparently I could do it twice.
• 19:49
  Uh, so they come back.
• 19:51
  They aren't superhuman.
• 19:52
  Like you say, they're kidding themselves.
• 19:54
  And maybe they've, like, I love this phrase, they've genetically
• 19:57
  mutated, you know, like they become a, a member of the X-Men.
• 20:00
  Jenny Oliver: Hmm.
• 20:01
  So that's why that person who doesn't need sleep either has won the genetic lottery
• 20:07
  or is slowly sabotaging their health.
• 20:09
  Your brain literally takes out the trash jar in sleep.
• 20:13
  It's essential biological housekeeping.
• 20:15
  It's not optional.
• 20:17
  So that's it for this week.
• 20:18
  Make sure you hit that subscribe button as we are gonna be unpacking the science
• 20:22
  behind everyday questions each week.
• 20:25
  And tell us in the comments what questions you'd like us to explore.
• 20:29
  Thanks for geeking out with us, but for now, that's it from me.
• 20:32
  Matt Edmundson: That's it from me,
• 20:33
  Chris Smith: and
• 20:33
  that's it from me.
• 20:34
  Jenny Oliver: Bye.