2022-07-11 20:08:44
How long do you need to sleep each day to be fit?
We are not all equal in the face of sleep. If some are real marmots, who are capable of nothing without their 9 hours of daily sleep, others are fresh and ready with only 5 hours spent in bed.
On average, it is estimated that the needs are between 6 and 9 hours of sleep per day for a good recovery. But there are light sleepers who need less than 6 hours, and heavy sleepers who need more than 9 hours of sleep each day to be fit. Isabelle Bonnefou, sleep specialist
And it is useless to struggle and try to go once morest his nature: the need for sleep is written in the genes and is revealed from birth. “We see that babies who sleep little remain adults who sleep little and vice versa”, adds Isabelle Bonnefou. These needs are defined by our chronotypealso called internal biological clock.
To know in which category one is placed, it suffices to observe one’s sleep time during a vacation day. “The length of a typical night’s sleep, without having set an alarm clock, roughly corresponds to our sleep needs”, indicates the specialist.
What are the health effects of sleep debt?
If it is so important to identify your sleep needs, it is because our state of health and well-being depends greatly on respecting it. And if it can be tempting to pull on the rope to stretch its activities and reduce the time slot dedicated to sleep, it is ultimately a bad calculation.
In particular, it has been shown that a sleep debt that develops over time was likely to favor a certain number of health problems : diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, lowered immunity, depression, cancers and degenerative diseases. ” It’s during deep sleep than the brain eliminates toxins which accumulate there every day, and are implicated in the onset of neurodegenerative diseases explains Isabelle Bonnefou, hence the importance of getting enough sleep.
Sleeping in at the weekend to catch up on short nights during the week: good or bad for your health?
As important as sleep is to health, our hectic schedules often prevent us from meeting the precious hours we need, let alone for heavy sleepers. The temptation is then great to catch up on the sleep lost during the week, by extending the night of the weekend by a few hours. Is sleeping in late a pleasure to banish or a luxury to indulge in without guilt?
Short term: bad for people who have trouble sleeping
We all live under the influence of 24 hour circadian rhythm, set by our biological clock itself governed by our brain. “When you get up in the morning, you synthesize a substance called adenosine, which binds throughout the day to specific receptors. When all receptors are filled: sleep comes. This is the principle of homeostasis,” describes the sleep specialist.
The time needed to synthesize enough adenosine to feel sleepy is fixed and does not vary from day to day: so the later we get up, the later sleep will come. Isabelle Bonnefou, sleep specialist
In people who do not suffer from any sleep disorder, shifting the weekend will not be a problem in the short term. On the other hand, the insomniacswill have a great interest in respecting their rhythm at the risk to keep the troubles going. “People who have sleep problems need to be re-educated : we must therefore track down everything that is wrong with their sleep hygiene, and sleeping in is one of them”, insists Isabelle Bonnefou.
In the long term: studies that contradict each other
But sleeping in would not just be a matter of regaining fatigue. Just as lack of sleep is bad for physical health, irregular sleep schedules and long mornings of rest might also have health consequences.
In any case, this is what a study conducted at the University of Arizona in the United States tends to show (source 1). Researchers who surveyed 984 adults regarding their sleep habits and health status. It emerged that compensating on the weekend for the hours of sleep lost during the week would create a social “jet-lag” on the organism, namely a mismatch between the biological rhythm and social life. This social jet-lag would be, for the human body, an aggression comparable to that of a round trip from Paris to New York for a weekend. It would also have a number of harmful consequences on the body, and would be accused in particular ofincrease the risk of cardiovascular disease by 11%. Depression et metabolic disorders would also be possible consequences of changes in sleep patterns between weekends and weekdays.
Another study published in August 2023 in The European Journal of Nutrition in August 2023 shows a increase in inflammatory markers as well as’un microbiome intestinal less good in people who sleep more on weekends (source 2). Consequently: “it can increase the risk of chronic diseases and lead to undesirable changes in the cardiovascular risk factors ; associations between social jet lag and poor diet, adiposity, and metabolic disorders have been widely reported,” the researchers say.
Conversely, a study conducted at Stockholm University on 43,880 participants aged under 65 over a 13-year period and published in the Wiley Online Library, arrives at completely different results (source 3). According to the study authors, “short weekday sleep is not a risk factor for mortality if combined with medium or long weekend sleep.” Which therefore suggests that shortened nights during the week may well be compensated for during the weekend.
It is therefore difficult to have an enlightened and unanimous scientific opinion on the thorny subject of sleeping in, but one thing is well agreed upon by sleep experts: it is recommended to have as regular sleep as possible to respect one’s biological rhythm and avoid accumulating sleep debts that are difficult to recover.
As Isabelle Bonnefou points out, “it is preferable not to go into a sleep debt compensation mode, and to reserve the sleep in for exceptional situations. »
Grasse mat’: until what time is it reasonable?
From what time do we talk regarding sleeping in? What time can we wake up on the weekend without fear of disrupting our biological clock or suffering from the possible harm of sleeping in?
To maintain a regularity in sleep and not risk going out of order, it is recommended not to exceed two hours of additional sleep on weekend days than on weekdays. Isabelle Bonnefou
If we get up at 7 a.m. from Monday to Friday, we therefore try not to emerge later than 9 a.m. on weekends, even if it means setting an alarm clock.
How to compensate for the lack of sleep accumulated during the week then?
So what alternative is there to sleeping in for people who can’t get enough sleep on weekdays? ” To choose, it is better to take a little flash nap30 minutes maximum in order to remain in light sleep and not to fall into deep sleep, which would prevent the famous secretion of adenosine”, slices the sleep specialist.
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