The 4-Hour Sleepers Redefining Human Limits with Ying-Hui Fu of UCSF
Inside the rare genetic trait that lets some people thrive on almost no sleep
Welcome back to Business Trip by PsyMed Ventures, a podcast exploring the future of mental and brain health & the startups building it! 🧠
Matias and Greg interview Ying-Hui Fu, PhD, is a Professor of Neurology at UCSF and a world leader in the genetics of sleep. Her lab has discovered the first-known genes behind “natural short sleepers”. Her work bridges human genetics and neuroscience to uncover how to modulate sleep for brain health, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases.
In this episode, we discuss:
How some people thrive on 4–6 hours of sleep with rare genetic mutations
Why sleep efficiency is more important than total hours slept
What short sleeper genes reveal about preventing Alzheimer’s and autism
Why current sleep research tools miss deeper brain activity patterns
What’s next in sleep science with potential therapies
Listen to the episode here, on Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts.
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