According to a study conducted by Polish researchers, seven nights of recovery are often insufficient to compensate for ten days of poor sleep.
- After a dozen bad nights, a week of recovery is not enough to regain its performance before the sleep deprivation.
- Brain activity is weakened with prolonged sleep deprivation. Compensating with a few nights of restorative sleep only increases reaction time.
Here is a study that should speak to insomniacs or parents of young children who are fans of very early morning awakenings. Published in the journal PLOS ONEshe provides some answers on the possibility, or not, of catching up on late hours of sleep after several bad nights.
According to its authors, from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, it takes at least a week of recovery to regain one’s reaction speed after a ten-day period of insufficient sleep.
Consequences on cognitive abilities
To reach this conclusion, the research team conducted a small study with several healthy adults who underwent ten days of voluntary sleep restriction followed by seven days of unrestricted recovery.
Participants were fitted with wrist sensors to monitor their daily sleep and activity patterns. They also underwent daily electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor their brain activity, and they answered a questionnaire each day to measure reaction times and accuracy.
The results showed that even after seven days of recovery, the participants still had not regained their pre-sleep deprivation performance. This is particularly the case for several EEG measures of brain activity, rest-activity patterns picked up by wrist sensors, and task accuracy. Only their reaction times had returned to their base level.
According to the authors, these findings shed new light on recovery from chronic sleep loss. Future research could expand to larger numbers of participants, investigate longer recovery periods, and distinguish the order in which different functions return to normal. “Studying the recovery process after a prolonged period of sleep restriction reveals that differences in behavioral, motor, and neurophysiological responses are found at both sleep loss and recovery”they note.
The effects of lack of sleep on the body
The effects of lack of sleep are felt from the first bad night. This deficit is associated with a lack of concentration and memory difficulties, an increased risk of car accidents, a weakened immune system, a less developed feeling of satiety and an increased appetite.
In the long term, sleep deprivation can have particularly bad health consequences, increasing the risk of stroke, certain cancers, diabetes and obesity.
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