Will You Ever Catch Up On Sleep?

From Scientific American magazine:

Let’s face it - you've given up your fair share of sleep. You’re constantly tired. So, the question is: will you ever catch up and feel truly rested again? When we skimp on sleep, we accumulate what experts call sleep debt. This is the difference between the amount of sleep you SHOULD be getting and the amount you actually do get. It's a deficit that grows every time we shave some extra minutes off our nightly slumber. This is a BIG cause for concern when it comes to our health.

Studies show that such short-term sleep deprivation leads to a foggy brain, bad vision, impaired driving and trouble remembering. Long-term effects include obesity, insulin resistance and heart disease. Most Americans suffer from chronic deprivation. So basically, we’re a country full of forgetful, fat, disease-ridden zombies who drive badly. Generally, experts recommend 8 hours of sleep per night. Most of us get only 6.8. So on average, we’re losing about an hour of sleep each night — that’s more than two full weeks of slumber every year.

The good news is that, like all debt, and with some work, sleep debt can be repaid. It won't happen in one extended snooze marathon. Lawrence J. Epstein is the medical director of the Harvard-affiliated Sleep Health Centers. He says tacking on an extra hour of sleep a night is a good way to catch up, but the BEST way is to go to bed when you’re tired, and allow your body to wake you in the morning - no alarm clock allowed. You might find yourself banking around 10 hours of shut-eye at first, but as the days pass, that amount will gradually level out. Because as you erase your sleep debt, your body will come to rest at a sleep pattern that’s specifically right for you. You’ll benefit all the way around. Psychiatrist William C. Dement, who founded the Stanford University Sleep Clinic, says when you knock out sleep debt, you become “superhuman.” In other words, your mental and physical capabilities dramatically improve. Finally - a scientific reason to ditch the alarm clock!