Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep?
May. 9, 2008 by Lisa Currie
From Scientific American…
Let’s do some sleep math. You lost two hours of sleep every night last week because of a big project due on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, you slept in, getting four extra hours. Come Monday morning, you were feeling so bright-eyed, you only had one cup of coffee, instead of your usual two. But don’t be duped by your apparent vim and vigor: You’re still carrying around a heavy load of sleepiness, or what experts call “sleep debt”—in this case something like six hours, almost a full nights’ sleep.
Sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get. It’s a deficit that grows every time we skim some extra minutes off our nightly slumber.