Call him Captain Conscious

Our columnist could be one of the X- Men, and his superpower is the ability to ... not sleep.

I HAVE always wanted to be one of the X- Men, and maybe now I am. Let me explain.

Last year, I filmed a travel series in the Philippines and like most shows, the call times were brutal. Waking up before sunrise was normal, and any time I had to wake up after 7am was considered a luxury.

During the shoot, I couldn’t wait to get home and sleep in until lunchtime. I was going to become the king of sleepy town; I would become one with the bed.

But it didn’t happen; I couldn’t sleep in. I kept waking up around 8am, no matter how late I went to sleep the night before.

This pattern has continued right up to the present, which is to say I’ve been getting by on five to six hours of sleep for the past eight months.

People my age are supposed to sleep seven to nine hours a night. And I don’t have children, or a nine- to- five job to wake me up. What is happening to me?

First off, sleep is important though we’re not entirely sure why. But every living thing sleeps.

Dolphins sleep with half their brain awake to monitor their surroundings. Some ducks will actually sleep with one eye open to watch for predators. But an activity that shuts down an animal completely putting it at great risk of predators must have a purpose.

Famed sleep researcher Allan Rechtschaffen once joked, “If sleep doesn’t serve an absolutely vital function, it is the greatest mistake evolution ever made.”

And sleeping does serve a vital function. It is more important than just providing rest. Lab rats deprived of sleep – in what must have been an awfully cruel experiment – eventually died after a couple of weeks.

The rats didn’t die of anything specific; they just seemed to expire from sheer exhaustion. Poor rats.

But the same thing happens in humans when they’re deprived of sleep. A very rare genetic condition known as Fatal Familial Insomnia ( FFI) always results in death.

It starts usually when the person is in their fifties and they can no longer nap. Soon they can’t sleep a full night ... until finally, there is no sleep at all.

The condition usually lasts a horrifying sleepless year, until finally the subject dies. And up to now I thought a drowning death would be the cruelest way to go.

The idea that our ability to sleep is tied to genetics is becoming more prominent.

Recently, researchers found a genetic mutation known as DEC2. People with this mutation need less sleep than other people.

DEC2 “mutants” usually sleep only a few hours a night and function just as well as their longer sleeping counterparts. The idea is that their brains do all the repairing and maintenance it needs faster than others.

When I think about it, my mother has – much to the chagrin of my sleepy father – gotten by for decades on four to five hours of sleep a night. If it runs in the family, that means I’m a DEC2 mutant! Which means I’m a real life X- Man! Finally!

Though admittedly needing less sleep isn’t as cool a mutant power as retractable claws or lasers that shoot out of your eyes, I’ll take it. Call me Captain Conscious from now on because I’m ... yeah ... conscious. A lot!

There are quite a few successful people who barely sleep, like Jack Dorsey – the founder of Twitter and Square – and Donald Trump who famously said “How does somebody that’s sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with someone that’s sleeping three or four?”

Trump’s a competitive guy. And a fellow mutant!

Picture Trump and I in our X- Men super jet, cruising around using our ability to ... well, not sleep. He could be my sidekick, Captain Conscious and LoudMouth-Bad- Wig- Boy.

So if you’re not a DEC2 mutant like myself and Loud-Mouth- BadWig- Boy, there’s not much you can do. Some of us are born with great powers and some aren’t.

And while other DEC2 mutants use this extra time to build financial empires, I utilise the extra time to sneak in video gaming before my girlfriend wakes up.

Hey, I might be an X- man but I didn’t say I was a hero.

Catch Jason on the LINK on Life Inspired ( astro B. yond Ch 728).