From The DANA Foundation:
Is one long slumber enough to restore you to full alertness after many nights of insufficient sleep? Not according to a new study from Harvard researchers, who found that chronic sleep loss impairs alertness in ways that even a ten-hour sleep can’t fix.
“When people try to determine whether they have caught up on sleep loss, it is important that they think not only about the last night or two, but the last several weeks,” says the study’s lead author, Daniel Cohen, a neurologist and sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Of particular interest, I thought, was the impact of pulling an all-nighter:
“The deterioration from staying awake 24 hours in a row was ten times greater than normal,” says Cohen.
I have to confess to sometimes being terrible about my sleep patterns. I frequently pull all-nighters. On the flip side, I also frequently sleep 10-12 hours. It seems to work for me, but then again, my circadian rhythm doesn’t naturally seem to be 24 hours – more like 28-30.
How about you? What are your sleep habits? How do you feel it affects you?
Image credit: movimente