Is getting 6 hours of sleep one night and 10 hours the next equivalent to sleeping 8 hours and 8 hours?

Question

Is getting 6 hours of sleep one night and 10 hours the next equivalent to sleeping 8 hours and 8 hours?

In: Biology

Answer 1

It’s not 1to1. It’s a good idea to get more sleep after you’ve gotten less, but you can’t trade hour for hours. It also matters how many high and low activity cycles your brain goes through. It’s frustratingly inexact because we don’t actually understand sleep all that well.

Sleep is when your brain cleans itself. Your nerves retract and the fluid flow increases to wash out all the neurotransmitters that got left floating around.

So you can fall behind on sleep, but you can’t get ahead on sleep.

You can get something dirty enough that it’s hard to get it clean, but you can’t get something clean enough that it’s hard to get it dirty.