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
I take it to mean that there is only one optimal or “right” amount of sleep for a specific person, regardless of the situation.
If your body functions best with 8.5 hours of sleep, that will be true every night, regardless of how many hours you got (or failed to get) the night before. So if you stay up all night and feel exhausted, the solution is to get 8.5 hours of sleep, not 10 hours. Accordingly you can’t “bank” sleep by getting 10 hours the night before you plan to miss some hours. You’ll still be just as tired or even more so, because 10 hours exceeds your optimal amount.
I think this is mostly true. I worked in the film industry for many years, and often got 3-5 hours of sleep during the week. If I tried to over-sleep on the weekend, to make up for it, I didn’t feel much benefit. Around 8 hours was best. Although there is a caveat, that I found after a week of little sleep, it was harder to get restful sleep. I would end up staying in bed for 10 hours, with a few hours of restlessness interrupting the actual deep sleep.
I read a science article a while back about this. If I can find it again I’ll post it here. The gist of it was that our brains sort of ‘wash themselves’ while we’re sleeping. If you don’t sleep long enough, your brain isn’t squeaky clean the next day. This not only impacts your immediate health the day after a bad sleep, but can also result in long-term damage if poor sleep is a chronic habit. Just like there’s no point in washing dishes that are already clean, you can’t pregame sleep and expect your brain to cooperate. Similarly, if you ran dishes for a half-cycle every time you put them in the dishwasher, those plates are gonna be gross.
Edit: Here it is: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/the-brains-connections-shrink-during-sleep/515472/
I think it comes down to trying to chase lost sleep almost. For example if you stayed up all night one time, you may then have the urge to sleep for 12 hours instead of your usual 6. The saying typically means that having 12 hours of sleep won’t really give extra benefit because you cant have the missed night of sleep back
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