Can You Ever Really Catch Up On Sleep?
We've all heard it and most of us have probably said it: "I can't wait to catch up on sleep this weekend." After a long week of getting up early and working late, most of us look forward to sleeping in on Saturday morning, sometimes until the afternoon (no judging here). Over the course of a busy week we accumulate what is termed a sleep debt, which is really just a fancy way to quantify the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount of sleep you actually do get. The idea of banking sleep conveys the idea that for any currency taken out causing a debt, in this case sleep, that debt can be made up for by returning the same currency in a larger amount later. For most of us, banking sleep has surpassed healthy strategy and become a way of life. But does it actually work?
Let's say that you normally sleep eight hours nightly, but this week you had a massive project due and only slept six hours nightly. Surely, you'd be feeling tired and ready for a weekend of sleeping in and heavy cat naps, so you sleep an extra two hours both Saturday and Sunday. On Monday you might wake up feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but you are actually still operating on a sleep debt of about six hours - equivalent to an entire night's sleep by last week's standards. So even though you might feel like you've paid your debts, there's more where that came from.
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Let's say that you normally sleep eight hours nightly, but this week you had a massive project due and only slept six hours nightly. Surely, you'd be feeling tired and ready for a weekend of sleeping in and heavy cat naps, so you sleep an extra two hours both Saturday and Sunday. On Monday you might wake up feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but you are actually still operating on a sleep debt of about six hours - equivalent to an entire night's sleep by last week's standards. So even though you might feel like you've paid your debts, there's more where that came from.
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