ELi5: Experts say you can’t “pre-sleep” and also can’t catch up on lost sleep; what exactly does that mean? Since it’s not like I feel tired for the rest of my life after missing a night’s sleep, after a few days of good sleep I’m back to normal.

Question

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

Answer 1

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.