You may think that people who sleep more on average will have a better sleep score, but science says that’s not necessarily the case. The metrics used to calculate our Sleepers sleep score can interact with each other in unexpected ways. Some of these metrics include: the amount of time spent asleep, sleep efficiency (the amount of time spent asleep while in bed), and sleep latency (how long it takes you to fall asleep).
Sleep is one of the most fundamental aspects of our health, but the way that we sleep can widely vary between individuals. These differences are apparent even when looking at a handful of Stadium Science Sleepers. So, do short sleepers just need less sleep overall? The National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep in America Poll from 2003 revealed that 30% of people sleep for more than 8 hours a night and 15% sleep less than 6. Such differences can be influenced by lifestyle, environment, and even genetics. More specifically, there is a gene variation in DEC2 that is associated with lowered total sleep time. So perhaps some of our Sleepers with shorter sleep times have this variation, and just biologically need less sleep; however, research has also suggested that many short sleepers may be simply sleep-depriving themselves in an unnatural way.
In a scientific study, researchers compared the sleep of short (<6 hours on average) and long (>10 hours on average) sleepers when they were provided long sleep-opportunity windows in a dark clock-free room (Klerman and Dijk 2006). Initially, short sleepers slept just as much as long sleepers, indicating that the short sleep time they usually have isn’t what their body would naturally do. By the third day, the short sleepers actually slept for more time than the long sleepers. This prolonged increase in sleep time indicated that short sleepers were recovering from accumulated sleep debt. This result implies that short sleepers may actually be chronically sleep-depriving themselves.
Why is this important to consider when predicting our winning Sleeper? Sleep-deprived individuals have surprising, yet important, differences in their sleep quality. This includes changes to their overall sleep-architecture, with the amount of time spent in deep sleep and rapid eye movement altering. Additionally, a sleep-deprived person actually has a shorter sleep-onset latency and higher sleep efficiency. Therefore, a short sleeper may have a higher sleep score, despite being sleep-deprived.
For those participating in Stadium Science’s nightly sleep-score bets, these variations might make for an exciting challenge. Will the long sleeper with variable efficiency outscore the short sleeper with consistent sleep quality? Or will the recovery of a chronically sleep-deprived individual throw off predictions?
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Klerman EB, Dijk DJ. Interindividual variation in sleep duration and its association with sleep debt in young adults. Sleep. 2005 Oct;28(10):1253-9. doi: 10.1093/sleep/28.10.1253. PMID: 16295210; PMCID: PMC1351048.
Dr. Beverly Setzer
setzersscience
Dr. Beverly Setzer is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT specializing in Neuroscience and Computational Neuroscience, with a mission to advance human health technology. She earned her PhD in Computational Neuroscience at Boston University, uncovering brain dynamics driving transitions between sleep and wakefulness using cutting-edge neuroimaging and quantitative analysis. Beverly's work spans diverse projects, from modeling anesthesia effects on brain activity to studying health event predictions and sex differences in reward-circuit function.
