Submitted 3 days ago by lyth@sh.itjust.works to [deleted]
I’m assuming that if I lose two hours of sleep for five non-consecutive days that I won’t have to sleep for ten hours straight in addition to the eight-ish I’d normally be asleep for. How well does the body keep track of this stuff? How much will it forgive?
Bear with me as I’m not thinking super clearly from the caffeine crash and messed-up sleep
I don’t believe in sleep debt. I sleep, I’m tired. I don’t sleep, I’m tired. The game is rigged
From personal experience there is interest to pay on sleep debt unfortunately. You can’t pay it off all in one night either, it takes a couple good sleeps to fully recover.
there is interest to pay on sleep debt
oh, that’s good.
And the interest rate goes up, exponentially, with age.
And by age, I don’t mean 30 or 40.
By 20 I was already feeling it, just wouldn’t admit it.
A slightly different perspective- maybe like a mortgage, you can only pay off so much debt in one go. otherwise it costs you more
I can pay off about 1hrs per day. So any sleep over 9 hrs males no difference, but 9 helps me recover faster than the normal 8
Sleep debt itself is a weird metric. You can’t “pay it back”, lost sleep is lost sleep, period.
The body doesn’t keep track, the body just complains. You might feel weird if there is a dramatic change to your sleep schedule.
So what we’re really talking about here is not sleep debt, but rather, sleep loss.
Honestly one could probably make a comparison to a loan shark, you keep paying it off but the interest is so high and you keep borrowing more you just stay in debt and keep sinking deeper.
I don’t remember the source, but I’ve read that, while getting a good night sleep for a couple days feels much better, it takes 9 days of good sleep in a row to recover as much as you can from sleep deprivation. If I recall sleep flushes out chemicals that build up in your brain, they can only build up so much before it’s saturated, and it takes the 9 days to fully catch up on flushing them out.
It sounds like the biggest thing that would help you is managing your caffeine consumption. I went through caffeine withdrawal a few times before deciding I didn’t like it and setting the following boundaries that have helped. First, no coffee/energy drinks after 12 hours before I want to sleep. So I go to bed at 10pm, I have all my coffee drank before 10am. This gives your body a chance to process most of the caffeine so it affects your sleep less. Second (and the hardest if you’re already used to daily caffeine) I try not to drink caffeine two days in a row. This keeps it from building up in your system, which keeps your tolerance low, which also means it feels like a super power when you do drink caffeine.
First, no coffee/energy drinks after 12 hours before I want to sleep.
So if I wake up at 7am and want to be in bed 9 hours before 7am. That means the only time I can drink energy drinks is before 10am.
Brutal, esp since the important part wears off in less than 4. Let’s negotiate.
I can have one at 8am, 1pm and the last at 5pm?
This sounds about right to me. I was awake for 7 days without sleep, and it took about 7-9 nights of >9 hours of sleep to feel normal again.
Sleep doesn’t work like a health bar in a video game.
Different stages of sleep have different efficiencies. For instance, passing out drunk doesn’t count as sleep. You body is still active in digestion which can prevent a good sleep, or intoxication can prevent the brain from going into deep sleep.
Sleeping is an activity. Humans are just weird for closing both eyes and both sides of the brain at the same time, but it doesn’t mean that we shut down completely. Most animals do not sleep this way If we could experience partial sleeping like animals, we’d probably understand better what a good sleep is…
What you need is called restorative sleep.
logos@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Image
toynbee@lemmy.world 3 days ago
IIRC, the next line is “good night!” which really enhances this response.
If I don’t recall correctly, well… I guess I’ve added nothing and I apologize.
logos@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
That really would have been better.