What Can We Do To Make up for it?
Is there such a thing as a sleep credit? Unfortunately, evolutionary biology in humans did not come up with such a safety net for humans to sleep lesser. Sleep debt? Yes, it’s real and it affects us in several ways. A good example of the biology that has evolved in our human bodies would be our bodies being able to store “credit” fats in our adipose tissues, allowing us to survive better without food and manage energy expenditure better. However, building up a sleep credit does not exist, humans did not face such problems with regards to sleep only in recent decades. Therefore, there is no system in our bodies which actually helps us to deal with lack of sleep. (Sleep Debt)
Social Jetlag
A common misunderstanding that most of us have is thinking that we can just sleep off the weekends due to the lack of sleep from the weekdays. We do this by sleeping in longer over the weekends.
Sadly, the case isn’t so simple, what really happens is the circadian rhythm is being disrupted over the weekends when you sleep late and wake up at a later timing. The extra few hours of sleeping in affects going to bed timing when Sunday comes, as the body prepares for the following Monday workweek. We end up having trouble sleeping on a Sunday night, waking up early, hence lacking that sufficient number of hours of sleep as well as the possibility of missing out a few stages of sleep in the night. This makes us feel groggy the following day, affecting productivity and mood levels throughout the rest of the day.
A person whom Peter Attia had, based on his podcast the Peter Attia Drive, he mentioned that this friend of his who worked in the finance sector (Staying in the US), involved in eastern European markets, had a sleeping habit in that he could not sleep past 3am in the morning no matter what happens. Whether he sleeps in earlier or later on the same night, he was always up by 3am. He undergoes a therapy using melatonin and blue light methods to phase shift his body back into the correct time zone. It actually took many months before this method was able to correct the biology and circadian rhythm back towards normality.
Sleep debt, the fatigue which we pile up as we lose hours during the week, needs to be treated carefully like a real debt.
Tips on Catching Up On Sleep (Healthline.com)
1. Sleep more on the weekends, but not more than 2 hours past the normal time which you normally wake up.
2. Allocate and take a power nap of 20mins in your day, careful not to take longer naps due to entering deep sleep and waking up in the middle of it, feeling groggy and tired throughout the rest of your day.
3. Sleep more for 1 or 2 nights
4. Go to bed earlier the following night.
5. Do not exercise 3 hours or lesser before bed time.
6. Ensure to spread out the “repayment” of your sleep debt over the week, like you would to your credit card or mortgage. You don’t pay it all at once, this ensures that you’re not changing your brain and body too much (circadian rhythm), allowing your body to still be able to catch up on sleep.
7. Incorporate sleep inducing foods throughout the day, such as salmon, eggs, tofu, lentils and spinach. These foods contain an amino acid known as tryptophan, which is known to boost feel good and sleep inducing hormones serotonin and melatonin.
Do note that these guidelines do help with short term sleep loss, however, most of us are guilty of chronic offenders. If we lose an hour of sleep every night in a year, that actually adds up to a sleep deficit of 2 weeks! Some researchers actually mentioned that if you build a sleep debt of more than 20 hours, you may not fully be able to reverse the negative effects of sleep deprivation!
There is still hope for most of us with hectic and distracted lifestyles, being aware and taking committed actions to change our bad sleeping habits Armed with the above knowledge and these few simple tips, you’re on your way to better productivity and higher energy levels to power through for the rest of your week!
