Sleep Myths and Facts

 

Myth1: Getting one hour less sleep a night won't change your daytime efficiency.

 

Fact: While you do not feel tired throughout the day, even one hour of sleep deprivation may hinder your capacity to think clearly and react quickly. It also affects the heart function, stamina, and capacity to combat infections.

 

Myth 2: The body adapts to various sleep patterns easily.

 

Fact: Most individuals will adjust their biological clocks, but only with the correct timing—and even then, only for one to two hours a day at most. As a consequence, transitioning after flying through several time zones or moving to the night shift at work will take more than a week.

 

Myth 3: Getting more sleep at night can help you overcome issues of chronic daytime exhaustion.

 

Fact: Although the quantity of sleep you get is significant, it is the consistency of your sleep that you should focus on. Some people sleep eight to nine hours a night but don't feel refreshed when they wake up due to bad sleep quality.

 

Myth 4: If you don't get enough sleep throughout the week, you will make up for that on weekends.

 

Fact: While this sleeping routine will serve to alleviate some of a sleep debt, it will not be enough to compensate for a loss of sleep. Furthermore, sleeping later on weekends will disrupt the sleep-wake cycle, making it even more difficult to go to bed on Sunday nights and wake up on Monday mornings on time.

 

 

From: The National Institutes of Health's The Roadmap to Safe Sleep