Rest of the Sleep Disorders Forum Posting

Posted by Honest Expert / but only mattresses on July 05, 2001 at 11:59:49:

In Reply to: Re: This is a bit odd, but I'm curious... posted by Belinda on July 04, 2001 at 20:09:09:

Hi Belinda,

Thank you for the nice things you said. I wish I could take credit for original ideas, but I am just parroting things I have read.

I don't know who it was that first coined the phrase "sleep debt," but it is a remarkably apt descriptor.

Like a credit card, when you are short on sleep, you build up a debt. When you pay off the debt, you don't need to pay any more ... until, that is, you acquire more debt.

With people (and almost all other creatures), debt occurs whenever you are awake.

Sometimes the idea that you can pay back sleep debt is confused with the fact that you cannot "sleep ahead." It is not possible to "bank" sleep, but you CAN make up the lost sleep and get to back "zero."

Once you get to "zero" though, you are done: You cannot sleep extra today to need a little less tomorrow. BUT! once you are working with only the debt that you build from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed -- and NOT carrying that debt forward from day to day -- you will have no problem staying up a little extra on any given night (but be sure to pay it back soon!).

I like to compare it to running: Almost ANYONE can run 20 yards -- if they have to -- when they are well rested. But when you add 20 more yards onto the end of a strenuous 100 yard dash, even an athelete will struggle that extra distance.

When you wake up in the morning having completely paid off your sleep debt, it will matter only slightly if you stay up a few extra hours in the evening for a party. But if you are carrying a hundred hours of sleep debt from one day to the next (which is like not sleeping for 4 days straight!), staying up a couple of extra hours can be a huge effort and exact a significant toll.

From what I have read, no one knows what the maximum sleep debt is (if there is a maximum). They know that controlled subjects who are deprived of a specific amount of sleep will make up that amount, if given the chance, within about a two-week limit. But the funding has not been available for longer testing, so no one can say for sure what the maximum limit might be.

They DO KNOW that people in professions that lose sleep in great quantities (like ER doctors) -- where they may have lost many hundreds of hours of sleep in a year's time -- do NOT sleep hundreds of extra hours when they are given the chance. But they MAY sleep 2 or 3 or 4 extra hours per night for a couple of weeks as they pay back the debt.

So, sleep debt may just be like a bucket: Once it gets to the overflowing point, it can't build up any more. BUT! it *CAN* be emptied!

(((Hmmm. What an annoying mixed metaphor!)))

Why is something as natural as sleep so difficult to attain? Because we don't give it the same importance as we give similar drives! When we have a thirst, we do what we must to take in liquids. When we experience hunger, we do what we must to get nutrition. When the biological urge to procreate hits us, we make the necessary connections.

Our perception is that all those other necessities are *active* circumstances, while we perceive sleep as a *passive* circumstance: It should "just happen."

Then -- culturally -- we have made sleeping akin to slovenliness! We think of sleep as being similar to eating: If you eat too much, you become fat; if you sleep "too much," you become lazy. Yet this is a position founded on ignorance.

The fact is, you CAN'T sleep "too much": Once the debt is paid, you wake up! (Yes, a person can lay around in bed NOT sleeping, but we shouldn't confuse that with SLEEP!) The difficulty is that most people don't understand this: They equate laying around doing nothing with sleeping because you ARE laying around doing nothing when you sleep (from a societal perspective, anyway).

But sleep is NOT "doing nothing."

So ... one of the reasons that we don't sleep well when it is something that is so natural is because we haven't given it the status that it deserves: A vital necessity for human survival that is as important as food and water and air and procreative sex.

We understand the importance of good nutrition and fitness. When we understand that sleep is equally important, we will begin to LOOK for ways to recognize the problems and solve them, instead of just living with the miserable feelings that stem from poor sleep. We will HELP our neighbors, our loved-ones, our relatives and ourselves to find a way to sleep better.

But none of that can happen until the true significance of sleep is understood by our culture: We don't sleep to be lazy, we sleep to be HEALTHY!

((OK, off my soapbox, now!))

Good Luck,
Honest Expert

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