Sleep recovery

Scott Schwab:
There are few things in health more important than your sleep. What do you do when you are in a pattern of not sleeping well or you keep staying up late? How often do you go through the day without the needed energy to complete the tasks at hand? I want to dedicate this post to all of us who have battled sleep deprivation and lack of energy due to lack of sleep. The link below will take you to the article.

Facts:
First things first, we must understand the basics about sleep deprivation before we set out to resolve the problem. Findings support what other scientists have discovered in recent experimental studies in humans. Chronic partial sleep loss of even two to three hours per night was found to have detrimental effects on the body, leading to impairments in cognitive performance, as well as cardiovascular, immune and endocrine functions. Sleep-restricted people also reported not feeling sleepy even though their performance on tasks declined. Repeated partial sleep restriction in humans has been linked to metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular disease.
Turek and his team propose that this change in the sleep regulatory system is reflective of an allostatic response. In the short term, allostatic responses are adaptive, but when sustained on a chronic basis, such as in their study, an allostatic load will develop and lead to negative health outcomes. The allostatic load resulting from the accumulating sleep debt loops back to the sleep regulatory system itself and alters it.

Conclusion:
The more we make the habit of not sleeping, the more our bodies will adjust to that type of schedule. The best way to counter the effects of lack of sleep are to slowly reverse the effects by sleeping a good schedule from night until morning and then incorporating a brief nap or two for about 30 minutes so that your body gets back on a moderate schedulenfor sleep. The more you follow the schedule the easier it will be for your body to get back to the sleep that you were used to getting before the interruption in your pattern. It is not necessary to try and sleep all day to make up for the lost sleep, because it won't do the job. However, a good nights sleep followed by a couple of short naps will reenergize your body and help your mind perform at the level that you are used to.