Sleep debt

[bulan]

Have you ever tried to make up your sleep debt? If so, what seemed to work for you? Also, has anyone seen a doctor/specialist or read any recent books or research about making up sleep debt? What have you learned about it?

I've been sleep deprived sincle last July due to my son's minor accident at a swimming pool. He's fine, but when it happened I stayed up two nights straight to watch him. That triggered a cycle of sleep deprivation, including trembling and the sensation that my heart must work harder, both of which keep me awake at night, which triggers more sleep loss and anxiety. My main concern is reversing the damage to my heart. Has anyone experienced something similar?

[bulan]

Has anyone found a solution to chronic sleep-debt?

[PanchoGoz]

I don't understand sleep debt...I think you just need to get back to sleeping normally. I don't think there's such a thing as sleep debt surely? For example if you miss two hours sleep you wouldn't add two hours on the next night. Your normal eight hours would recover that.
Also can you explain more about the damage to your heart? How is your heart damaged?

[caracol]

Hi there,

I'm taking a course on sleep right now, so here goes...

After sleep deprivation, which was a couple of nights after the accident in your case, you actually catch up on sleep relatively quickly by adding extra time to your regular sleep. This happens because the "necessary" or "deep sleep" that your body really needs to be rejuvenated is prioritized over lighter sleep, and will occur earlier in your sleep cycle and will be more intense. If you missed two nights worth of sleep, you won't need to catch up on 16 hours of sleep. The amount needed to "catch up" will be different, but it's impossible to know exactly how much. Usually you can catch up on one night's missed sleep in a couple of nights. So you don't really accrue a chronic sleep debt per se.

Normally after some sleep loss, your sleep schedule should return to normal relatively quickly. It's likely that you did catch up on the sleep you missed during those two nights a while ago, and now you may be suffering from insomnia due to your anxiety. You are right that sleep deprivation can lead to some unpleasant side effects, and yes, it makes life much more difficult in many ways- concentration, irritability, increased anxiety, etc...

Likely what you would need to focus on is insomnia. The most recommended method for dealing with acute insomnia today is a combination of sleep meds and therapy. The sleep meds can cause dependency and have side effects, so sleep experts don't recommend that you use them for long periods of time, just for a little while to get started on repairing your sleep. I think a lot of us underestimate what a vital role sleep plays in our health, and it's hard to make it a priority when there are so many other things going on. Practicing good sleep hygiene (going to bed and waking up at the same time every day including weekends, getting 8 hours of sleep a night, turning off electronics an hour before sleep because the blue light can disturb sleep, not exercising within 2 hours of bedtime, making sure your room isn't too hot, sleeping in a dark room, only using the bedroom for sleeping and ) can help your sleep return to normal.

This might sound like it comes from a textbook...because it does! But I feel your pain personally. I've had huge anxiety over health problems for a couple of months at a time and lost a lot of sleep during those times. It really affects your life and makes the anxiety a lot worse. My sleep returned to normal after I dealt with the anxiety about the health problems, which as we know, is not easy! I found that it helped me a lot to stop thinking about the combined amount of sleep I lost, and just focus on trying to get a good night's sleep every night, as close as possible to 8 hours. I also had to stop checking the clock when I couldn't fall asleep because it made me so much more stressed out.

In terms of your heart, from what I've learned, sleep deprivation is associated with higher blood pressure and sometimes heart palpitations. But based on the length of time you've suffered from sleep deprivation, I think you should be able to recover and be just fine As far as I know it's the people who have been suffering for years and years that we have to worry about more.

I've also found that listening to a guided relaxation before bedtime really helps me relax. I put it on my ipod and listen to it while I'm lying in bed (I know I said no electronics, but it does seem to help!)

I hope this makes sense and helps! There is a lot of misinformation and myths out there about sleep so it can be hard to find good information. the textbook I've read is Understanding Sleep and Dreaming by William Moorcroft. Sending you sleepy vibes!