![]() "Sleep quality is as important as sleep quantity. Instead, aim for a consistent amount of sleep every night. You should also avoid flip-flop sleep patterns where you continuously undersleep one night and oversleep the next night, says Dimitriu. But, the agency says, it may take several nights to feel better again. Dimitriu says you should make sure you're getting a t least seven or eight hours of sleep per night, and ideally going to sleep and waking up at around the same times each night and morning.Īccording to the CDC, you sleep more deeply when you are sleep deprived, so you don't need to "pay back" every single hour of lost sleep. Treatment: In order to recover from sleep debt, you need to get adequate sleep. Sleep debt can result from even one single night of insufficient sleep, and it can take several days to recover, says Alex Dimitriu, MD, board-certified psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine.Īside from excessive sleepiness, you may notice cognitive impairments such as: Some medical conditions that can prevent you from getting a good night's sleep are: Though sleep debt can occur simply because life has gotten in the way of getting a good night's rest, it can also be a result of a health issue. This debt builds up over time - the more sleep debt you accrue, the more sleepy you may feel and the longer it takes to return to your baseline. For example, if a person who usually gets eight hours of sleep suddenly has a few days of only getting six hours, they'll go into sleep debt. Your GP could also look at any possible underlying health conditions.Sleep debt is a real condition that occurs when you aren't getting enough sleep over a series of multiple days compared to what you typically get and need. There is some research to show that exposure to sunlight in the morning also helps regulate your body clock, and if you frequently get up late, or don’t go outside, you may not get this exposure. Both of these things could help to shift your sleep cycle to an earlier sleep/rise pattern. Your GP may also be able to prescribe melatonin for you in the short term to help you get to sleep earlier, and you may want to consider getting a light box, possibly to use in the morning. I would go to your GP and ask to be referred to your nearest sleep clinic (it may not be that near and the waiting lists are long). If you have a cycle that starts later than the “norm”, you won’t be producing melatonin until later. When we start to feel sleepy, our body produces melatonin to help us fall asleep. You may be a person who not only needs more sleep, but who has a delayed sleep cycle. I think we can get very hung up on averages and forget that there are people above and below that average. If you were to “consistently go to bed in the early hours, that might tell us your circadian rhythm is delayed compared with the norm – and if you sleep for 10 hours, that would tell us you have a longer-than-average sleep requirement”. If you score more than 11, that might be something a sleep clinic looks at.ĭr Zeman wondered what happens when you are totally left to your own devices to go to bed when you want and get up when you want, without family or work expectations. Do you nap? Do you feel sleepy? There’s a useful Epworth sleepiness scale quiz you can do to test daytime sleepiness. Dr Zeman would also look at what you’re like during the day. If anything is disrupting your sleep (and you may not realise it) you may not be getting the restorative sleep you need, so need to sleep for longer. Your GP may prescribe melatonin to help you get to sleep earlier, and you could consider getting a light box to use in the mornings “Conditions I would have in the back of my mind during this assessment include obstructive sleep apnoea, in which snoring leads to pauses in breathing which disrupt sleep and, less likely, narcolepsy which can disrupt both sleep and wakefulness,” he added. ![]() He said that if he were seeing you in his sleep clinic he would take a full sleep history. I went to Dr Adam Zeman, a professor of neurology at the University of Exeter medical school who has been treating sleep disorders for 25 years. I don’t want to burden my husband with all the morning childcare either, nor do I want to miss out on doing fun things as a family because I couldn’t get up in time. I’ve been worrying about it more recently because my husband and I are going through the process of adopting a child, and I worry that I won’t be able to get up to see to their needs, or that I’ll be a grumpy parent all the time. I don’t feel this is depression because I have a lot that I look forward to, and this has been a problem all my adult life. I feel like requiring more than 10 hours a night in order to feel energised is excessive. ![]()
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