Researchers recommend getting some extra sleep on the weekend to pay off your ‘sleep debt’. But if you want to avoid Mondayitus, experts recommend going to bed early instead of staying up late and sleeping in on the weekend.
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00:00 It's been a long week, so you decide to treat yourself to a much-needed weekend sleep in.
00:06 But is a weekend sleep catch-up a good idea?
00:17 The danger in trying to
00:19 recover your lost sleep by sleeping in later on the weekend,
00:25 particularly if you stay up later on Friday and Saturday nights.
00:29 What this does is
00:31 delay your body clock. What we know as the Monday morning blues is
00:36 partly explained by a lot of people who don't get adequate sleep on Sunday night, and they're just sleep deprived to some extent.
00:45 An average adult needs around eight hours of sleep. Get less than that and your day starts to accumulate.
00:56 Usually you don't have to get
00:59 the number of extra hours that you supposedly lost to pay back your sleep debt.
01:04 So for example, if you stayed up all night, you could just sleep an extra three hours the next day.
01:11 You're back to normal.
01:13 You're fully recovered. So you've only paid back two or three hours of the eight hours you lost,
01:18 but you feel like you've paid back your debt. So how can you pay off your sleep debt?
01:22 Initially, we suggest people start going to bed half an hour earlier
01:27 than what they would normally go to bed. Turning off our devices at least half an hour before going to bed is a good way
01:32 to help our body release and produce the melatonin that we need. Maybe having a shower before bed just to help
01:39 calm the body down and the brain down. And if you have to pay back the sleep debt on the weekend,
01:45 at least one night on the weekend,
01:48 help to pay that back by going to bed a bit earlier. Don't stay up even later.
01:55 Because if you go to bed a little bit earlier and then sleep in a little bit later, you'll repay that debt
02:01 without shifting the timing of your body clock.
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