Long sleepers

Metabolite Production. Strain variations to hexobarbital are often dependant on its degradation rate. For example, male mice of the AL/N strain are long sleepers, and this trait is correlated with slow inactivation of the drug. The reverse is true in CFW/N mice, which have short sleeping time due to rapid hexobarbital oxidation. This close relationship is further evidenced by the fact that the level of brain hexobarbital at awakening is essentially the same in all stains. Similar strain differences have been reported for zoxazolamine paralysis in mice. 

Aeschbach D, Cajochen C, Landolt H, Borbely AA. Homeostatic sleep regulation in habitual short sleepers and long sleepers. Am J Physiol 1996 270 R41-R53. 

Aeschbach D, Postolache TT, Sher I, Mathews JR, Jackson MA, Wehr TA. Evidence from the waking elecroencephalogram that short sleepers live under higher homeostatic sleep pressure than long sleepers. Neuroscience 2001 102 493-502. 

Only one study has carefully looked at characteristic performance or alertness as a function of habitual sleep duration. Taub (34,35) examined performance in groups of 7.5-hr- and 10-hr-sleeping university students. The long sleepers were found to have significantly shorter reaction time, improved vigilance per-... 

Hartman E. Sleep requirement long sleepers, short sleepers, variable sleepers, and insomniacs. Psychosomatics 1973 14 95-103. 

Hicks RA, Pellegrini RJ. Anxiety levels of short and long sleepers. Psychol Rep 1977 41 569-570. 

Kumar A, Vaidya AK. Anxiety as a personality dimension of short and long sleepers. J Clin Psychol 1984 40 197-198. 

Benoit O, Foret J, Merle B, Reinberg A. Circadian rhythms (temperature, heart rate, vigilance, mood) of short and long sleepers effects of sleep deprivation. Chronobiologia 1981 8 341-350. 

Aeschbach D, Sher L, Postolache TT, Matthews JR, Jackson MA, Wehr TA. Thyrotropic status as a marker of chronic sleep pressure in habitual short sleepers and long sleepers (abst). J Sleep Res 2002 ll(suppl 1) 1—2. 

Like all biological functions, sleep length varies widely. If the number of people who sleep for various durations is plotted on a graph, the result is a bell-shaped curve. Estimations of the chance of falling within 1, 2, or 3 standard deviations from the mean are shown below. Only one in a thousand people falls outside these limits, but such short or long sleepers do exist. 

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