Natural short sleepers make up less than one percent of the population and sleep significantly less than others without any clear health drawbacks.
Author: Shayla Love
Published on: February 18, 2026
Illustration: Grace J. Kim
Joanne Osmond grew up in rural Pennsylvania with two nighttime rules at home: stay in your room and be quiet. But it was not mandated that you had to sleep—something Osmond and her three brothers and two sisters were fortunate for, as they rarely went to bed early. Osmond would stay up late reading novels borrowed from the school library; her sisters loved doing crossword puzzles; even her engineer father often tinkered with the television late into the night and early morning. Only their mother, who set these rules, could manage to get what she considered “a full night’s sleep.”
Osmond, her siblings, and her father are what scientists refer to as natural short sleepers. While some people experience sleep deprivation due to insomnia or shift work—often feeling fatigued, cognitively impaired, and facing long-term health problems like increased depression and heart disease risk—natural short sleepers (less than 1% of the population) sleep significantly less without any apparent negative health consequences. “Growing up, we never felt particularly special,” Osmond told me. It wasn’t until 2011 that she discovered she carried a genetic mutation linked to short sleep. Her sisters, who also underwent testing in 2019, have the same genetic variance. Now 77, Osmond sleeps no more than four hours each night.
My interest in short sleepers comes from several friends (not for the first time) who set New Year’s resolutions to “sleep better.” Sleep issues have also lingered in my mind. I’ve never suffered from insomnia, but while juggling school and bartending in my teens and twenties, sleep was a luxury I could forgo. As a journalist, a cup of strong black tea helped me start writing at 4:30 or 5 a.m.—my most productive time—then I’d spend the entire day busy at the office. Yet, as I entered my thirties, I often found myself waiting until after sunrise to start writing, with caffeine no longer reviving me. When I lack sleep, my brain feels like hardened leather: rigid, unyielding, and prone to cracking under pressure.
If you’ve ever wondered what you could do with a few extra hours each day, Osmond provides an answer. Rough calculations indicate she has been awake thirteen years longer than her peers. She’s certainly made good use of that time: earning an engineering degree, marrying an engineer, raising five children in the suburbs of Chicago, and holding high-pressure jobs in technology and management. While her husband sleeps, she studies education policies, ultimately becoming president of the Illinois School Board Association. In one conversation, she told me, after I fell asleep, she was still teaching students around the world how to start businesses. “The world seems to need eight hours of sleep, but I don’t,” she says. I felt a warm jealousy swell within me.
Ying-Hui Fu, a human geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco (U.C.S.F.), has studied around one hundred short sleepers. She tells me these individuals raise fascinating questions about the very nature of sleep. People often ask her: why are short sleepers so rare? Wouldn’t evolution reward those who reduce unconscious time? But she suspects that this trait only became valuable in modern times. “Before electricity, being a short sleeper likely offered no advantage in the dark,” she says. Fu’s research also indicates that our sleep needs are closely tied to our daily activities. Many she has studied tend to engage in high-demand jobs and intensive hobbies, have high pain tolerance, and don’t require tea or coffee or suffer from jet lag. “I call them ‘Homo sapiens 2.0,'” Fu jokes. Perhaps the deepest mystery is how short sleepers can thrive on so little rest. Is it possible for others to do the same?
Most animals need sleep, but the exact reason remains unclear. One mainstream theory posits that sleep replenishes energy stores in brain cells; another suggests that sleep clears waste from the brain; yet another argues that sleep aids in consolidating memories from the previous day. If the purpose of sleep is still not clear, the necessary duration is even more debated. Bats can sleep for 18 to 20 hours a day, while wild elephants sleep only 2 hours each night. For humans, the “eight-hour” standard has become a dogma—”My body needs eight hours,” Fu tells me—but actual sleep needs largely depend on genetics.
What is certain is that terrible consequences occur when animals are deprived of sleep entirely. In 1894, a Russian doctor subjected some puppies to fasting and others to sleep deprivation. The result was that the sleep-deprived puppies died within days, while the hungry ones survived. The Guinness World Records no longer accepts applications for “the longest period without sleep” due to the inherent dangers of sleep deprivation. Yet most of us are quite the opposite: we are overly fixated on sleep duration and quality, resulting in sleep-related books consistently topping best-seller lists. The sleep tracking markets for devices like Oura and Whoop are valued in the billions. A modern ailment—”orthosomnia”—has even arisen, described by a scientific article as “an obsessive pursuit of optimal sleep metrics,” ironically, this pursuit may decrease sleep quality.
Sleep is regulated by two major systems. The first is the so-called “circadian clock,” which regulates sleep and wakefulness over approximately a 24-hour cycle. Each person’s circadian rhythm varies slightly, explaining why some people (larks) rise early while others (owls) stay up late. The second system is the “sleep homeostasis drive”: the longer you stay awake, the more fatigued you become. Amita Sehgal, a chronobiologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, tells me these two systems usually work in concert, but they can also become misaligned. When severely sleep-deprived, you might feel an urge to sleep at any time. (Our responses to sleep deprivation appear to have a genetic basis: after 38 hours of wakefulness, identical twins (with the same DNA) performed more similarly on reflex and alertness tests than fraternal twins.)
The spotlight on extreme sleep patterns emerged in genetic research in the 1990s. At that time, neurologist Chris Jones at the University of Utah encountered a woman who regularly went to bed early in the evening and would wake in the middle of the night. Her granddaughter also had the same sleep pattern, leading Jones to intuit that it might be explained by DNA. He reached out to neurologist Louis Ptáček at UCSF, who helped him identify a seemingly related DNA mutation. Fu joined Ptáček’s research team in 1997. “I’m very good at identifying mutations,” she tells me.
As the team published research results (one of the first revealing how DNA affects sleep), thousands of individuals began reaching out to them. Many had irregular schedules but maintained a consistent sleep duration. Fu says that very few sleep extremely late and rise extremely early, curiously, they lack complaints common in those with insomnia or other sleep disorders. In 2009, after studying a mother-daughter pair of short sleepers, Fu published a paper on the DEC2 gene mutation associated with orexin production—this is a hormone related to wakefulness. (A lack of orexin is a leading cause of narcolepsy.) When Fu introduced the same mutation into mice, these mice exhibited shorter sleep durations than other mice.
Since 2009, Fu and her colleagues have published research on six mutations across five genes, all associated with reduced sleep needs. (Fu tells me there are more genes under investigation.) The genetic variant carried by Osmond and her sisters impacts glutamate receptors—glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain that serves multiple functions. In 2019, researchers identified another mutation in a father-son pair; once Fu’s team introduced it into mice, they did not display the memory defects usually seen in sleep-deprived mice.
Segal, who didn’t participate in Fu’s research, studied sleep in fruit flies and is intrigued by the fact that these genes do not seem to tie to specific sleep processes or brain pathways. “No single mechanism stands out,” she says. Neurophysiologist and geneticist Mehdi Tafti notes that the mystery of short sleepers underscores our ignorance of how sleep operates. When he screened for DEC2 mutations in hundreds of irregular sleepers, he found nothing. Fu believes that short sleepers have developed different sleep patterns. Sehgal posits another explanation: perhaps their bodies accumulate less damage while awake.
In theory, gene mutations linked to short sleep and their affective pathways could become targets for drug development, aiming to safely reduce our sleep requirements. The association between orexin and narcolepsy has spurred new pharmaceutical research; a clinical trial last year indicated an experimental orexin-blocking drug shows promise for insomnia. Experimental drugs that increase orexin might also help narcolepsy patients stay awake longer. However, developing a drug that can transform a typical person into a “Osmond-style” short sleeper presents a greater challenge. Fu points out that by seeking short sleepers and tracing back to a single mutation, she may overlook other more subtle genetic factors. In a sample screening of nearly 200,000 individuals from the UK Biobank, these mutations alone didn’t correlate with extreme sleep patterns. Moreover, sleep is crucial, and Fu urges drug developers to proceed cautiously. “The worst-case scenario is you develop a drug that carries horrible side effects,” she says. “You sleep less, but five years later, you get Alzheimer’s.”
Tafti notes that our fantasy about reducing sleep stems from the difficulty of achieving “sleep well” and “sleep enough.” Good sleep hygiene—like going to bed and waking up at the same time each day—requires setting boundaries between work and family responsibilities. It calls for wise but unexciting choices: leaving a party early, reducing alcohol consumption, and avoiding late-night snacks and screen time. Of course, we’d rather pop a pill than do all that. Unfortunately, notes Tafti, “we can’t eliminate the need for sleep.” Traditionally, clinicians hoped that central nervous system stimulants like modafinil could allow us to sleep less without consequence, but they were wrong. (Similar to caffeine, arousal drugs merely suppress sleepiness, not eliminate it.) Perhaps the next best approach is to personally explore how much sleep you need. One of the methods experts recommend is to go on vacation. Only sleep when tired, get up when rested, and you’ll naturally approach your true sleep needs.
A few weeks ago, my alarm woke me at 2:46 a.m. I trudged into the kitchen and turned on a few lights in an attempt to wake myself up. I had arranged a Zoom meeting with Osmond and two other short sleepers at a time when they would typically be awake while I would be asleep. Two of them even entered the waiting room early.
Brad Johnson, 69, from Utah, grew up in a family with five short sleepers and three normal sleepers. His mutation is related to a neurotransmitter receptor active throughout the body, including areas of the brain active during REM sleep and wakefulness. For him, it was 1 a.m., and he was about to fall asleep.
Lynne White, 83, from California, is the only short sleeper in her family. Her mutation is linked to reduced non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep and more deep sleep brainwaves in laboratory mice. For her, it was midnight, and she was planning the remainder of the night.
The three had never met and were curious about each other. Johnson asked the others how many hours they usually sleep. Osmond, in Chicago, had just risen and typically goes to bed around 11 p.m. “I sometimes can go three days without sleep, Brad,” White joked.
Johnson used to sleep five hours but now requires about four and a half. At 19, he realized he was a short sleeper—during a two-year Mormon missionary assignment that required him to go to bed by 10:30 p.m. “It felt like someone asked me, ‘Why can’t you grow to seven feet five inches by tomorrow?” he recalled. He would sneak away to read in the closet or bathroom.
“Our brains never stop moving,” Osmond said. “Whatever we try to do, it always needs to be filled.”
“You always have to find something to do,” Johnson agreed. He used to worry that his sleep pattern was unhealthy—after all, he often heard that he should be sleeping more. Knowing about his genes alleviated those worries. Now, he is a retired financial executive with eight children; he conducts a choir and an orchestra of two hundred people and volunteers for his church, reading countless biographies while collecting speeches and presentations over the past fifty years.
Such extended wakefulness might also lead to feelings of loneliness. “Sometimes I look out the window and no lights are on in the entire neighborhood,” Osmond said. And while I might feel frustrated by not having enough time before bedtime, short sleepers need to ensure they don’t run out of meaningful tasks. (“I think I had a brother who died because he couldn’t keep his brain busy and turned to alcohol,” Osmond had told me earlier.) Even with volunteering, mentoring, work, child-rearing, and hobbies, she’s still looking for new interests. When the Icelandic volcano erupted for the first time in centuries in 2021, she read everything she could find about geology, and then felt bored and moved on to other things.
Johnson’s children are not short sleepers, but he has seventeen grandchildren, one of whom may be. “I get up at five o’clock; she won’t be long after,” he said. He asked Osmond and White about their family situations. “I think I annoyed my children,” White replied. “I would always wake them up.” When her son was in college and had to rise early for a job, he discovered she was already up reading the news. “You know, I’ve never seen you lie in bed,” he told her.
I felt drowsy and enjoyed listening to their exchanges while occasionally chiming in. Johnson and White reported they didn’t need painkillers after surgery. White mentioned her volunteer work fixing devices for other Apple users.
I felt a twinge of jealousy towards short sleepers, but the conversation deeply reminded me: changing one’s relationship with sleep is incredibly challenging. Johnson can’t force himself to sleep through the night, just as I can’t attend a 3 a.m. meeting every day. As they conversed, I thought how delightful it would be to return to bed, perhaps even catch up on sleep. Some joys belong solely to long sleepers, I mused.
Have they extracted more value from their limited lives? White noted that when she was younger, she needed extra time to run three real estate businesses and raise children. She often asks herself, “What’s left for me to do?” Johnson has felt a conflicting sense of urgency about time. “I love to say, God knows I need an extra three hours to keep up,” he says.
However, all three indicate their experience with time has evolved since retirement. White now asks more open-ended questions: “What do I want to do?” “Joanne inspires me in some way,” she said, referring to Osmond, “she’s so efficient.” Osmond humbly responded by pointing out White’s frequent volunteer service. I found comfort in this: even short sleepers reflect on how they utilize their time.
I sensed that all three were glad to find each other. Before the call ended, White revealed a hint of envy: “Having a family you can resonate with sounds so wonderful,” she said to Johnson and Osmond, “and I have no one.” She turned to me jokingly, “I think you created a friend group for me.”
“You can always reach out to me,” Osmond interjected. “Chances are, I’ll be awake.” ♦