Sleeping in on the Weekend Is Not Enough to Compensate for Chronic Sleep Loss

Many people think they can make-up for lost sleep during the work or school week by sleeping in on the weekend, however, a new study by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Rush University Medical Center finds that people may have a false sense of recovery from their sleep debt.

According to the study authors, during the afternoon and early evening, the circadian system has the remarkable capacity to override the negative effects of prior sleep loss. This combined with the short-term restorative properties of extended sleep can mask the effects of chronic sleep loss during a typical waking day.

However, the cumulative effect of chronic sleep loss causes performance to deteriorate much more rapidly for each consecutive hour spent awake, particularly during night. When individuals with a history of chronic sleep loss attempt to work extended hours into the night, their reaction times become 10 times slower, increasing the risk of accident and errors.

"This paper continues a long line of systematic research on the effects of the brain's 24-hour clock, sleep, and sleep deprivation. Through this process of discovery, not only are we unraveling the mysteries of normal and abnormal sleep and wakefulness, but we have crossed the threshold of being able to make evidence-based statements on the importance of protecting time for sleep in alertness-critical occupations," said James Wyatt, PhD, study co-author and director, Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center at Rush University Medical Center.

The research is published in the January 13, 2010 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Read more about the Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center at Rush.