I'm thinking of a word......
OK, so there is a medical condition where the person with this condition only requires 1 or 2 hours of sleep a night. They have no ill effects and are perfectly rested and can function for the next 23 hours without any requirement for sleep. In the case I remember seeing on TV, this one guy only needed 45 minutes of sleep a night. Now what I need to know is the medical term for this condition. I have searched Google, Ask.com, WebMd, and a whole bunch of other sites and cannot find anything. Maybe someone could help me out, someone who might know how to search for something like this more efficiently? I'm talking to you Aaron. If you can find the term for this I would greatly appreciate it.
posted by Dan at 5/23/2006 03:13:00 PM
5 Comments:
LOL...you're too funny. You should have just named this blog...Attention Aaron I need your help.
3:57 PM
I know of no such condition except in some cases involving developmental dissabilities. I would call it insomnia coupled with denial. I have heard of these rare people but I doubt they "have no ill effects" in the long run. Based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of the subject, getting so little sleep for a prolonged period will result in decreased production of melatonin, insulin, and various metabolic processes. While they may feel healthy, I imagine a detailed analysis would show otherwise and they will not live a normal life span.
I did a brief search but didn't come up with anything. You can search pubmed.org but you will have to wade through a lot of technical papers. I will search a bit more later.
5:26 PM
Ok, I found the technical term for people who require very little sleep. Ready for it? "Short-sleepers"! Who would have guessed? I doubt this is the term you are looking for but I see it used frequently and in otherwise technical sounding articles.
As I suspected, most cases turn out to be insomnia and have serious consequences unbeknownst to the short-sleeper.
3:27 PM
You know I could have come up with something better then Short-Sleeper. I saw that in research articles too and just thought they were being lazy. I am going to make up my own term for it then. I'll think of something when the time comes.
3:46 PM
I got one. Hyposomnism©. But you can't use it... I'm copyrighting it.
4:42 PM
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