The Healthy Way to Catch up on Sleep

Getting a good night’s rest is one of the simplest ways to recharge, support well-being, and get your brain and body ready for the day ahead. Between busy schedules, family, work, and active social lives, getting enough sleep can sometimes feel like a luxury. It doesn’t have to be that way

Adequate sleep reduces your risk of adverse health conditions and is associated with better cognitive, physical, and emotional health, explains Healthline. On the other hand, the consequences of missing out on sleep are cumulative. Here’s the full scoop on sleep debt and how to catch up in a healthy way.

Adenosine and Sleep Debt
The average person needs seven to nine hours of sleep a night, but if you aren’t clocking in that many ZZZ’s you’re in good company. About a third of people in the US don’t get enough sleep. Lack of sleep is associated with various health deficits, including an increased risk of conditions like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Inadequate sleep can also affect cognitive functioning and emotional health.

The detrimental effects of lack of sleep may be cumulative as well, as sleep debt builds up over time. So, for example, if you missed out on two hours of sleep for two nights in a row, you would  owe your body four extra hours of sleep. 

This happens because of adenosine, a hormone produced by the brain that regulates your circadian rhythm by inducing feelings of sleepiness. Over the course of the day, adenosine builds up in the body and at bedtime, it resets. If your body doesn’t get the expected amount of sleep, however, adenosine keeps building up, keeping you more sleepy for a longer time. This hormone also affects brain activity, blood flow, and heart rate.

Catching up on Sleep
Missing out on sleep can severely impact your body’s ability to function. The good news is that lost sleep is not lost forever. It’s possible to catch up on missed sleep. You just need to be willing to invest the time. 

A study, published in Scientific Reports, found that it takes the brain and body four days to catch up on just one lost hour of sleep. And the longer you let the sleep debt go on, the harder it is to catch up, especially in a way that doesn’t affect your daily sleep routines.

The BBC reports that if you decide to catch up on a workweek’s worth of sleep debt, by sleeping in until noon on Sunday, there’s a good chance you won’t feel that tired at bedtime that night. Consequently, you’ll hit the sack late on Sunday and head into Monday’s workweek already accruing new sleep debt.

In addition, alternating sleepless weeks and sleep-filled weekends can negatively impact the body’s circadian rhythm. Power napping is also not an optimal solution for catching up on sleep debt, as daytime snoozes are very different from overnight rest.

How to Catch up in a Healthy Way
The sleep debt still needs to be filled, even if the solution isn’t spending Sunday in bed, explains Till Roenneberg, professor emeritus of chronobiology, to the BBC.

“Of course you have to catch up on sleep,” he said. “Sleep is one of the most important functions in our lives.” But how can you do that?

One way to optimally balance your circadian needs with your sleep debt needs is to increase weekend sleep but only by an hour or two. This seems to functionally reduce inflammation, anxiety, and depression without overdoing it on the sleeping in.

A study that looked at how to catch up on sleep, published in Sleep, found an association between getting just a single additional hour of sleep on the weekend and significantly lower levels of systemic inflammation. This association was especially noticeable for study participants who regularly clocked less than six hours of night during the weekdays.

A little extra sleep can go a long way. By making rest a priority and keeping your sleep schedule consistent, you can gradually pay down sleep debt, keeping you healthy, alert, and well-rested.