Does “not being able to catch up on lost sleep” mean that every night of lost sleep accumulates to a shorter life span, more illness, or something of the sort?
In: Biology
Great question!!! There’s nights I’ll get 2hrs of sleep, the next day/night I’ll stay up, the next night ill get 3hrs, etc…. Somewhere along the line I’ll legit CRASH for 24hrs (periodically waking up to use the bathroom or grab a drink.)……… Also sometimes that mixture feeling of not being asleep, or awake, and just laying in the bed for a couple hrs..
Experts do NOT say you can’t catch up on sleep. It may take several nights to make up a sleep deficit but you certainly can do it. Read about it in this book: [https://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection-Happiness/dp/0440509017/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&qid=1628536891&refinements=p_27%3AWilliam+C.+Dement&s=books&sr=1-3](https://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection-Happiness/dp/0440509017/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&qid=1628536891&refinements=p_27%3AWilliam+C.+Dement&s=books&sr=1-3)
From my understanding, REM is like a purge and sleeplessness ruins memory and learning. If you go without sleep long enough, you can hallucinate. As far as I’m aware this is mostly reversible damage but you obviously won’t get memories back.
Well, I don’t know what experts you were reading about, but BuzzFeed isn’t from expert. It’s scientifically proven a known that within a 7-Day cycle, you can catch up on your sleep within that time frame.
Going months with severe insomnia and suffering sleep deprivation, can cause permanent damage, you can’t not sleep for a month and then catch up on it, but if you lose let’s say 12 hours of sleep in a week within those seven days of starting to miss time sleeping, you could sleep those extra hours, and catch up. It’s about your body requiring a certain amount of time to be in rest mode, for deep healing and Body Repair. As well as to comprehend, analyze, and store information gathered in the day.
But, within a 7-Day cycle of losing sleep, you can sleep the same amount of hours to catch up
It’s like being dehydrated. You can’t drink more water to make up for being dehydrated in the past. At some point you are just hydrated again…anything more doesn’t really help and it doesn’t change that you were dehydrated.
You can extend this analogy to pre-drinking. Yes, you can absolutely make sure you have adequate intake before you do something strenuous, but there is a limit. At some point you are just hydrated. If you tried to drink 8 gallons then go without for 72 hours you’d run into issues.
In the same way you can’t charge your phone to 200% if you’re going to be away camping, you can’t get more sleep before a long day to avoid being tired, and you can’t get extra sleep afterwards to recover. Sleep needs to be constant and reasonably measured in order to be healthy both mentally and physically.
I’ve answered this question before. But here goes.
Don’t muddle together long term sleep deprivation with short term. That’s where the confusion sets in.
We don’t truly understand exactly why we need sleep. But we know that sleep is important for clearing out metabolic waste in the brain and hormone regulation, one of the most important being cortisol, or for the purpose of this discussion, stress.
In the short term, say a single poor nights sleep, you’ll be tired the next day as your body is attempting to tell you to “fix” the problem. Sleeping extra the next night will correct the problem. Maybe even just a normal full nights rest will fix it without extra sleep.
Now say it’s been a year and you have slept 5 hours a night ever day. This does permanent damage down to the cellular level. Your body has been unable to properly regulate itself because you have disrupted a key process. No amount of extra sleep will fix it. We have found studies relate this type of behavior with early dementia and various chronic diseases.
True ELI5: in the short term you can make up for sleep loss, in the long term the damage is already done and is beyond just sleeping more.
They mean you can’t sleep for a week, and then stay awake for a week. Being awake drains your batteries, and you can run on empty, but your battery only holds so much power. You can’t pre fill it to last longer. And if you run on empty for really long, it’s still the same battery you’re charging.
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That was what they thought until recently at least. New research suggests you can catch up on lost sleep. You can heal your brain once you get into REM sleep again, it may take a long time depending on big your deficit is to catch up to but it’s definitely possible.
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