Friday, September 21, 2012
With planning, 'you snooze, you lose' no longer applies to work week’s sleep debt
Health & Wellness Tips - UT Southwestern: Contrary to popular belief, sleeping in on the weekends doesn’t help you catch up on sleep lost during the week, but rather makes you sleepier come Monday morning. “A great myth of sleep deprivation is that if we miss sleep over the course of the work week, we need to catch up on an hour-by-hour basis on the weekend,” says Dr. Gregory Carter, a sleep medicine specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
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15 comments:
This is quite the relevant topic considering many DP's at Carnegie Mellon don't really get any sleep during the week. I don't have the ability to catch up on the weekends, because often I have crew on Saturday. In an odd way, that might be helpful? I'd rather get used to a low amount of sleep (which I suppose will happen eventually) than constantly be in a state of "catch-up" on sleep.
I am so glad I read this article! I consistently think I can sleep in on weekends to make up for all my loss of sleep during the week, and all along I have just been making Monday mornings more difficult for myself! I already knew that eight hours was the ideal amount of sleep I was suppose to get, but I had no idea that I should be going to bed early instead of getting up late. Hopefully now I can keep my body clock more consistent.
This is a really good article. Having been treated for insomnia when i was younger, I already knew all that it said, but they are completely correct and im glad they posted it. Everyone needs to know how to sleep better, especially people who continually get into situations where they need to pull all nighters and things. That saying "early to bed and early to rise" is very true. However if you can't manage that, its really helps to go to sleep and wake up the same time every day, or atleast within an hour or so of your normal time. My brother's cross country team has to run at 6 am everyday and their coach has them on a 9:30 to 5:30 sleeping schedule every single night. My brother was very annoyed when he found that out but his race times actually improved once he got used to sleeping that way consistently and he's less tiered during the day than he was when he was sleeping in till 2pm.
Usually on the weekends i end up going to bed by 11 or so, about half and hour earlier than I do on most weekdays here, and i usually wake up before my week day alarm would have gone off.
Everyone who reads this article should really take it heart, it helps!
Kelly is correct as DP's and even in working in theatre lack of sleep unfortunately comes with the work. Half way through last school year i found that even though i would not be getting 8 hours of sleep i based my nights off of the 1 1/2 hour sleep cycle and would plan that around waking up at 7 am and if i got home at 2 i would wait half an hour to try and make sure to fit that cycle and it worked surprisingly well
This article completely opened my eyes to a healthier and more productive way to sleep. It is true that, as a DP, nearly everything we do must be productive. We don't have time for sitting around and doing nothing, nor would we ever really want or like doing so. I'm really glad this article was posted, because I have honestly been doing the exact opposite of what this article suggests for nearly my whole life. I am definitely going to work towards following what this article suggests, and hopefully I will be less tired come Monday morning!
This is terrible news and I almost wish that I wasn’t reading this after a huge assignment was just due. I think that subconsciously, we know that loosing sleep is not good for us, but I think in order to justify why we are staying up, we use the excuse of making it up later. I know that it doesn’t work like that and in the past, I know that I’ve felt some of those not so kind after affects from the whole ordeal anyway. It’s odd how we place work above our own health sometimes, it says a lot about who we are as a society. We also demonstrate the importance of the work by how many all-nighters we pull, which seems slightly ridiculous now. Unfortunately, it makes sense to us at the time and we harp over loosing sleep when, honestly, there are ways to avoid that fate. It has a lot to do with managing time and a work schedule. I am one of those people that sometimes go through the all-nighter in order to get something finished. It makes me physically ill but I do it anyway, probably when I could have avoided the whole matter in the first place. So the article is a good warning, but I think that it is a warning that many of us have had before and are aware of. It is a matter of putting the helpful actions into practice.
I had to go back to make sure that I read the same article as everyone else. Yes, I think that this article had a good point, but it clearly doesn't have enough information to start a sleep cycle revolution. Basically the author says, don't sleep in on the weekends, don't get hammered and stay up all night. So common sense?
I think after years of waking up on Monday and saying to yourself "why do I always feel so bad on Monday mornings" would be a cause to try something different. Hopefully we didn't need a news article to tell us this.
The only problem with this is that sticking to a completely rigid 8-hours-per-night sleep schedule doesn't leave a lot of room for, you know, fun stuff.
Last year I learned that I absolutely must stick to a specific sleep schedule during the week and any time work begins to really pile up. However, if I stuck to the same schedule during the weekends, I would have absolutely no social life. That's okay sometimes, and completely necessary other times. It's important to keep in mind that having fun (whether that means going to a party and getting drunk or staying home and watching your favorite Disney movie) is crucial to staying sane in a high-stress environment (coughcoughCMUcoughcough).
This article is definitely one of the most eye-opening articles I have read for this class so far. I am extremely glad it was posted because I always believed and did exactly the opposite of what this article is good for healthy sleep patterns. Although I will most likely (as a CMU student) get a full night sleep, by following these steps and doing what the article tells us, I hope that I will no longer be groggy and annoyed when Monday morning roles around!
This is something I hear all of the time. You cant think that sleeping in on weekends will make for all of the sleep you missed during the work week. I just can't seem to follow it. With a work load like we have in the School of Drama sometimes it feels like the only time you have to sleep a normal amount is on the weekends. I absolutely notice when I wake up on Monday's that it is much harder to get going because I have been sleeping much longer than I normally do. For me, extra sleep always wins out over a normal wake up the next day. Its a price ill just have to pay.
I'm with Taylor on this one... I'm really not sure what's so new about what this article says... it doesn't give any specifics beyond "sleep 8-hours a day" and "go to bed earlier". From everyone's comments, I was expecting some new information about how to "catch up" on sleep in a way that works, or at least a more detailed explanation of what happens when you mess up your sleep schedule. What this article says is absolutely true, and everyone should learn to take care of themselves and their sleep habits, but I'm just not sure what's so revolutionary about what it says.
This research is really far from new. A little common sense would tell you that sleeping in on the weekends sets your circadian rhythms later in the day and makes it more difficult to get up early for school/work on Monday. Given the sheer number of poorly researched popular articles about sleep I have no way of judging the validity of this statement, but I remember reading somewhere that regular sleep is actually better than more sleep. In other words, getting 6.5 hours of sleep every night, but going to bed and getting up at the same time every day is preferable to alternating between 4 and 10 hours of sleep and a bedtime of 10pm-4am. This is supposedly because our bodies like rhythm and consistent sleep allows consistent sleep cycles. It’s all about sleeping smarter, nor more because lets face it, as long as we’re students at Carnegie Mellon, we’re never going to get 8 hours of sleep a night anyway.
So, reading this article didn't tell me anything new, but it did remind me how important sleep really is to our success. I can't remember when I have had eight hours of sleep in a row. That is definitely a goal of mine, but one I have not yet met. I actually had a sleep study done last summer which showed normal results. I was having difficulty in the sleep area, but I think it was mainly due to the erratic schedules we keep. I don't see that changing much so I suppose I will have to try harder to get to sleep earlier. Catching up on sleep on the weekends doesn't usually happen for me so I guess that ended up being a good thing.
This article isn't new news to me, but that doesn't change the fact that I feel better if I sleep in when I can rather than waking up for no reason. If I am woken up by anything other than nature and being asleep too long, it takes me time to get acclimated to being awake and my days are less efficient. If I can wake up naturally and CHOOSE to get out of bed I feel motivated by myself to get work done. Plus, I agree with Taylor... this guy doesn't even say anything other than what my mom might tell me. I know there is data out there about this, so I wonder why he didn't use it. Regardless, don't call me before 1pm on Sunday.. I wont be awake.
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