It is that time of year again. The last week of classes and
finals are upon us, which has many in a frenzy realizing that there is more
work left to do than we remember. Bring on the large amounts of caffeine and
the sleepless nights. It’s only for a couple of weeks, right? Then comes winter
break and we will be able to catch back up on all that missed sleep. Or can we?
In
a recent article published by the Huffington Post, this very common question
was addressed. According to Dr. W. Christopher Winter from Charlottesville
Neurology and Sleep Medicine in Virginia, there is a bit of catching up that
can be done in the short term, but long term deficits and underlying issues
can’t be solved by trying to use weekends to “catch up.” Sleeping a couple
extra hours after you have experienced periods of sleeplessness can and will
help you feel more alert and more energized, but research conducted by the
Translational Medicine found that any long term health defects caused by lack
of sleep cannot be reversed by a few periods of adequate sleep.
So,
what can we do in the meantime to help us not get stuck in the cyclical pattern
of too much sleep on the weekends and not enough during the week? Maintaining a
regular sleep schedule is the number one recommended method. Try and stick to
this schedule to the best of your abilities both during the week and on
weekends, because it can help prevent insomnia. Make sure the environment you
choose to get your shuteye in means business: try darkening the room more and
turning off any unnecessary lights and electronics. And last but not least,
take more naps! Rather than reaching for that next cup of coffee, opt for a
short nap. The chances of that java actually waking you up is less likely than
a good old fashioned cat nap. Try remembering these helpful tips as we enter
into our final weeks of the year.
Happy
studying!
It is interesting to know that catch-up sleep does help in the short term but not in a long term which makes sense. I also found an article addressing the same issue where catch-up sleep on the weekend can alter the internal circadian clock, the master switch. It means that because the person is so used to sleeping late during the weekdays will have a hard time going to sleep early on the weekend; similarly, sleeping extra on the weekend will make it difficult for the body to adapt to waking up early during the weekdays. As a result, the person's regular sleeping cycle will be jeopardized as a whole. As you said, the best solution is to maintain a regular sleep schedule in addition to napping for not more 20 minutes each day.
ReplyDeletesource: http://www.everydayhealth.com/news/can-you-catch-up-sleep/
Sleep is a really interesting behavior that we talk about and do all the time. People have long been trying to figure out why we need sleep and what is the optimal amount. Recently, I have heard a lot about the polyphasic sleep cycle. This is when you sleep multiple times through out the day for shorter periods of time instead of one extended period of time at night. Advocates say that after your body becomes accustomed to short periods of sleep it will enter REM sleep faster. REM is believed to be a very important part of sleep and where rejuvenation occurs. However, not a lot of research backs this up. It is interesting what people do in order to try to make more time throughout their days and avoid sleep.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sleepdex.org/polyphasic.htm
Development of type 2 diabetes is an interesting consequence of decreased/interrupted sleep cycles. It has long been understood that glucose metabolism is greatest in wake cycles and lowest in sleep cycles, which is coupled with maximal insulin release while awake and minimal insulin release while asleep. If the wake cycle is extended, it is possible to experience decreased glucose sensitivity in one's waking hours. This can lead to the development of type 2 diabetes. The interesting part about this is that chronic sleep deprivation causes this development of type 2 diabetes, and it is not reversible by "catching up" on sleep. A lifetime of poor sleep cycles can cause severe metabolic deficiencies, thus your suggestion to stick to a steady sleep schedule is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteKnutson, K. L., Spiegel, K., Penev, P., & Van Cauter, E. (2007). The metabolic consequences of sleep deprivation. Sleep medicine reviews, 11(3), 163-178.
What I'm curious about is the value of REM verses these catnaps. Alana mentioned REM but I think even more can be said. A normal sleep cycle (meaning you go through all four stages as well as REM) is about 90 minutes. The last of these stages is REM, which is at the end of the cycle. This means you can't get into that REM in just 20 minutes. If REM hours are the functional unit of sleep, how are naps beneficial, energetically speaking, unless they're at least 90 minutes? I'd also be curious to see how this "catching up" on sleep might affect REM. We all know that caffeine is never preferable to sleep but that's probably because we know a lot about caffeine's mechanism whereas sleep is still has some substantial holes as far as our scientific understanding. I think I would be pretty interested in a study that focused specifically on the physical benefits of naps.
ReplyDeleteI also used http://www.sleepdex.org/stages.htm.
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ReplyDeleteOne of the latest crazes focus on the way our ancestors lived: the paleo diet. But what about paleo sleep? There has been a lot of research suggesting that the modern world we live in (namely lots of bright screens from our phones, laptops, TVs and tablets) is a huge detriment to the way we sleep and the quality of our sleep. However, some of the latest anthropological and physiological studies challenge the assumption that our ancestors slept significantly more than we do. Scientists studied three different hunter gatherer native groups and found that they slept for about 6.5 hours a night, which is on the lower end of what is recommended to us students. Although lack of sleep is tied often ultimately tied to poor heath, the native populations of the study were all very healthy, with long life expectancies. In fact, the word "insomnia" was untranslatable because sleep disorders don't exist in these groups of hunter-gatherers. Maybe the answer isn’t getting more hours of low quality sleep, but rather fewer hours of high quality Zzzzzs.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/10/15/448932273/up-late-looks-like-our-paleo-ancestors-didnt-sleep-much-either