The habit of pushing the body to and beyond natural limits with the view of eventual make up rest at some point in the week may be harming to the body.
Clinical psychologist and author of The Good Sleeper, Janet Kennedy, explains why frequent sleep deprivation is unhealthy. "Trying to make up all the hours actually distorts your body clock...It makes you feel more sluggish and cranky and is more stressful for your body."
A less than optimal amount of sleep can cause the cognitive function and information processing facilities to slow down. Because one of the purposes of sleep is to clear cognitive waste from the brain daily, habitual sleep deprivation may have far-reaching consequences to the memory and may lead to eventual damage to the brain.
Realistically, a 6 to 8-hour sleep is not always possible on a given week. Family, work and social demands may take precedence over regular rest so that the body's patterns are disrupted.
When the body is in debt, patch-up measures such unscheduled naps and caffeine are the common recourse. These compound the deprivation, however, by causing confusion to the internal clock. These sometimes lead to insomnia and even sleep anxiety.
The solution is not overcompensation but a return to the normal schedule. This is because a regular rhythm in the daily patterns is what the body takes as its cue. The disparity between staying in during the weekends and waking up early during weekdays should be lessened to as little as possible. At best adding around an extra hour of sleep during the weekends essentially divides the lost hours of rest and allows the body's recovery without creating any further internal confusion.
"Sticking close to a regular pattern is really what's best for your body," Kennedy highlights. "Otherwise, your body will always be playing catch up, and that game of catch up is actually worse. Your body typically can't make up for your entire sleep debt, particularly if that debt is chronically large."
