Can You Make Up for Lost Sleep During the Weekend

Steven Petrov
The Paw Print

Undesired weight gaining pointed out as one of the consequences of lack of adequate sleeping hours

In our modern day world, many of us are sometimes “forced” by our job, responsibilities, or just by personal conviction of being more productive late at night, to neglect our sleeping routine.
When asked about their regular or average hours of sleep at night the majority of people actually realize that they do not sleep enough, but a strange understanding is shared among most of them. People tend to believe that the missed sleep throughout the week can be made up for during the weekend. However multiple statistical and social researches show the exact opposite – the missed hours of sleep not only can’t be made up for, but also could have many negative long term effects on the human body.
The first study was done by Dr. Alexandros Vgontzas from Penn State University where 30 volunteers were put into an incredibly busy week schedule with not enough sleeping hours per day, and with the possibilities for extra sleep time over the weekends. The study showed increased levels of sleepiness in all participants, which eventually dropped down to normal after the weekend’s rest. However, the tests that focused on cognitive and mental skills, showed a significantly lower scores and results after the missing of regular sleep.
What was absolutely fascinating was that the significantly lower cognitive and mental skills were present up to 10 days after 4-day sleeping restriction period, and up to 7 days after 48 hours of not sleeping at all. So the question is how does not sleeping “help” you pack up some more unwanted weight? Well, the metabolic implications dealing with blood sugar levels that are directly caused by the loss of sleep, usually recover to normal levels after 3-4 days of solid 8-hour sleep.
However, if that doesn’t happen the body starts to feel it needs more energy to function properly, even though its reserves are perfectly usable. This is the basic principle of gaining weight due to unregulated and not enough sleeping hours each day.
Even though we all have our own busy schedules, we should understand the importance of sleep in our lives and that as much as we are trying to cut an hour or two from our sleep for something supposedly “more important,” we are hurting our all-round performance in life in the long term.
Sleep is an essential part of our well-being and we should never neglect it if we want to reach our full potential.