{"id":19449,"date":"2015-08-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dreams.co.uk\/sleep-matters-club\/who-are-short-sleepers-why-dont-they-need-sleep\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T10:41:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T09:41:50","slug":"who-are-short-sleepers-why-dont-they-need-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dreams.co.uk\/sleep-matters-club\/who-are-short-sleepers-why-dont-they-need-sleep","title":{"rendered":"Short Sleepers and Why They Don&#8217;t Need Much Sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people feel completely fine on four or five hours of sleep, night after night. They&#8217;re called natural short sleepers, and it comes down to their genes. Here&#8217;s what short sleep syndrome really is, and why you probably can&#8217;t join the club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":21728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,1,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-problems-sleeping","category-sleep-science"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Short Sleepers and Why They Don&#039;t Need Much Sleep<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Short sleepers feel fine on 4 to 6 hours of sleep thanks to rare genes. Here&#039;s the science, and how to tell it apart from sleep deprivation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dreams.co.uk\/sleep-matters-club\/who-are-short-sleepers-why-dont-they-need-sleep\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Short Sleepers and Why They Don&#039;t Need Much Sleep\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Short sleepers feel fine on 4 to 6 hours of sleep thanks to rare genes. Here&#039;s the science, and how to tell it apart from sleep deprivation.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.dreams.co.uk\/sleep-matters-club\/who-are-short-sleepers-why-dont-they-need-sleep\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Sleep Matters Club\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-08-12T23:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-07-03T09:41:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.dreams.co.uk\/sleep-matters-club\/wp-content\/uploads\/anthony-tran-vXymirxr5ac-unsplash.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sam Atherton\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sam Atherton\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Short Sleepers and Why They Don't Need Much Sleep","description":"Short sleepers feel fine on 4 to 6 hours of sleep thanks to rare genes. 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