It’s important to know that you cannot oversleep to make up for a lack of sleep. A good metric of having good “sleep health” is the ability to wake up at close to the same time every day without needing an alarm clock.įor quality sleep, avoid screens such as phones, tablets or televisions before bed. What can we do to improve the quality of our sleep and avoid having a sleep debt? First, try to go to bed at the same time every night and try waking up at the same time every day. That means our brains do not function as effectively, which leads to reduced brain function, poor brain health and potentially even mental health issues. In terms of how a lack of sleep impacts brain function, the most prominent working theory is that when we are sleep deprived, it reduces the ability of neurons - the cells that make up our brain - to communicate with each other. NREM3 and NREM4 are crucial for your body to recover from injuries and to have energy for the next day. Light - especially NREM2 - is a critical stage of sleep when memories form. NREM stands for “non rapid eye movement” and the stages are ranked from light sleep to deep sleep. REM stands for “rapid eye movement” and this is when we dream. People cycle through the stages of sleep several times per night. Humans cycle through five different stages of sleep each night: NREM1, NREM2, NREM3, NREM4 and REM sleep. How sleep works, and how it affects brain function Teens’ desire to stay up late and sleep in is completely natural. One interesting thing that science has shown us is that the circadian rhythm - our bodies’ natural clock cycle that determines when we sleep - is different for teenagers than younger children and adults. School aged children (ages six to 12) typically need nine to 12 hours of sleep per night, and teenagers need between eight and 10 hours of sleep a night. Just after they are born, babies might need to sleep up to 17 hours a day, and they will not reach the seven-to-nine-hours range until the end of adolescence. If you sleep more than that, it is worth talking with a doctor because oversleeping can be bad for you as well. Doctors and researchers recommend between seven and nine hours of sleep per night for adults. You might wonder what a normal amount of sleep is or if you are getting enough sleep. Research by my own laboratory, the Theoretical and Applied Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Victoria, demonstrated that sleep is the single biggest predictor of your brain’s ability to form new memories. Further, having a sleep debt can impair all of your brain’s systems - the ones that support perception, memory, attention, decision-making and even learning.Īs a neuroscientist, I am extremely interested in the factors that impact brain health and function. A lack of sleep can also make us more emotional and can contribute to depression. One of the most common signs of having a sleep debt is feeling like you are in a brain fog, where things are not as clear and focused as they should be. Having a sleep debt can impair all of your brain’s systems - the ones that support perception, memory, attention, decision-making and even learning.
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