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Nov 17, 2008 10:40 pm US/Central
Good Question: Can You Catch Up On Sleep?
(WCCO)
After a hard week of work or caring for kids, many of us look to the weekend to sleep in, and rejuvenate ourselves. But can you really make up for lost sleep?
"I don't think so," said Michelle Gayer, owner of Salty Tart, a bakery located in the Midtown Global Market. "It's kinda like when the money's gone, it's gone."
However, that's not what the most recent sleep research indicates, according to a neurologist at Abbott Northwestern Hospital's Sleep Center.
"Yes, there is a way to make up sleep," said Dr. John Trusheim.
"The way we conceptualize this is to say there is a sleep debt. Say you need eight hours of sleep, and you're only getting six a night," said Trusheim. "You would actually sleep extra for 'X' number of nights, five to 10 nights, to make up that sleep debt, as we like to call it. Then you'd be back to where you started in terms of wakefulness."
According to Trusheim, when people are in sleep debt, it's much like being in financial debt.
You have pain. "Fatigue, irritability," he said.
However, because many Americans think that five or six hours of sleep is enough, it's becoming more difficult to make up the sleep debt.
"Usually two days or a weekend is not enough to make up an entire sleep debt because you could only make up so much per night," said Trusheim.
But research indicates, "If we take a person who's sleep deprived, and allow them to sleep freely, they'll sleep extra, for 10 days. It'll happen naturally," he said.
Most people need seven-and-a-half to eight hours of sleep every night. And according to Trusheim, when we get behind, it's not like we have to make up that sleep on an hour-for-hour basis. However, it can take months to catch up to a healthy sleep pattern, if someone decides to deprive themselves of sleep consistently.
Also, this idea of making up sleep does not work in the reverse. Researchers do not believe we can store up extra sleep and save it to use later.
"I think there's a misperception -- people think they can get by with less sleep. They don't really realize what they're missing," said Trusheim.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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