Sleep terms you think you know but actually don’t

Short sleepers are born that way

Notes:

  • Pokémon Sleep is intended for entertainment purposes only and is not intended for use in detection, diagnosis, or treatment of any medical condition or disease.
  • The information provided in this article—and the sleep score registered through Pokémon Sleep—does not represent or substitute for a diagnosis from a physician or health care professional, and it cannot be used as a diagnostic or therapeutic treatment for a sleep disorder. Users should seek medical attention in case they present signs or symptoms that could be associated with sleep disorders.
  • Please note that the information in this article is intended for adults regarding sleep unless otherwise stated.

In general, it’s said that the average nightly sleep duration for an adult is about seven hours.

But among us, there are relatively rare individuals who can go without sleeping very much and still be healthy, known as “short sleepers,” as well as “long sleepers,” who tend to sleep more than average. But there is no set number of hours used to determine if someone is a short or long sleeper. The amount of sleep we need is different for each person. Long sleepers and short sleepers just naturally happen to need more or less sleep than average.

​​What is important is that you are getting the amount of sleep that is sufficient for you as an individual.

Reference material: https://aasm.org/advocacy/position-statements/adult-sleep-duration-health-advisory/

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About Dr. Yanagisawa

Masashi Yanagisawa
CEO of S’UIMIN Inc.

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Masashi Yanagisawa completed his medical doctorate at a graduate school in the University of Tsukuba and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1987, he discovered the vasoconstricting peptide endothelin while in graduate school, and in 1988 he discovered orexin, a neuropeptide that regulates sleep and wakefulness. At 31 years of age, Professor Yanagisawa came to the United States, where he presided over laboratories at the University of Texas and at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute over the span of 24 years. He founded the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS) in 2012, establishing it under the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s World Premier International Research Initiative. Professor Yanagisawa founded S’UIMIN Inc. in 2017 and currently acts as CEO.

He supervised the provision of sleep-related information during the development of Pokémon Sleep.

He was awarded a Japanese Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2016, received the Asahi Prize and the Keio Medical Science Prize in 2018, was named a Person of Cultural Merit in 2019, and received the Breakthrough Prize in 2023.

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Pokémon Sleep official website