Sleep Debt

Recently I have been sleeping a lot. On weekend this has been my sleeping pattern

• waking up at 10:30AM in the morning getting some chores done.
• have lunch @ 2:15PM try to watch a movie or read something.
• And before I could think of something feel like someone singing a lullaby and soon fall asleep just to wake up @6:45 PM in the evening.
• Still feeling sleepy thinking about getting something quick to eat (like pizza) and finish this blog before someone summons me back to sleep.

In one of the articles they say you get the best sleep at certain hours of the day. Have a look at the image below the deep sleep cycles are shown in deep red color with the time lines shown on the y-axis.

There has been a lot of scientific research done on sleep and I don’t want to go into that. But here I was more than interested to know why I have been sleeping so much lately. I stumbled across some article off course in my semi conscious/awakened state ( so please excuse me if my spelling or some part of this article does not make any sense.. you know why ; -) ).

So here is what I found I had a sleep debt, the effect of not getting enough. And why did this happen or to be precise how this is happen. This is how it happened.

• On Monday this week I got engrossed in a book and ended up remaining awake till 2:30 AM in the night. Only to wake up at 7:45AM in the morning. So only 5 hours of sleep.
• On Tuesday had a call with offshore. It went for an hour. Before I could hit bed the clock had already ticked 12:00 midnight. So I had 7 and half hours of sleep.
• Wednesday caught myself chatting with an old friend late before I could realize that it was already 1:30AM. So on wednesday only 6 hours of sleep.
• Thursday I though of not staying awake but an interesting discussion took, after that a phone call to an old friend, very late dinner had me stay awake till 12:30. Still managed to pull in 7 and half hours of sleep.
• Friday you know no need to ask what happened, its the Friday night stayed awake till 2:30AM. Again thought of sleeping late next morning with no alarm. Guess what some one was calling me up in the wee hours (glad that I had my cell on vibrate.. but vibrate mode still makes a lot of sound if you want to sleep) still managed to sleep till 10:30 next morning.

Studies says that a normal adult needs 7-8 hours of need daily ( see the chart below for more details). So evidently I was sleep deprived. I needed to sleep for 40 hours ( 5 days X 8 hours) this week but I ended up sleeping only for 34 hours this week. So I had 6 more hours to cover up for.

Now this is only for one week. This has started me to think over the time when my office works is on the peak. Now 6 hours of sleep deprivation if I keep the same schedule over rest of the year might increase to 312 hours/year ( assuming that I am not able to cover up my sleep quota on weekends) . Sometimes even traveling adds up more hours to it or lets say a road trip to get away from the tension of the daily work cycle. Those quick trip with less sleep also ends up adding more hours.

As per studies they say sleep deprivation causes a large debt causes mental, emotional, and physical fatigue. It is unclear why a lack of sleep causes irritability; however, theories are emerging that suggest if the body produces insufficient cortisol during deep sleep, it can have negative effects on the alertness and emotions of a person during the day.

I don’t wanna think more about the problems right now or my sleep debt, just wanna order some pizza get back to what I was doing few hours ago .. sleep. You can call me sleeping beauty for this week, for girls who feel offended by a men taking away their fairy tale title can be happy calling me khumbhakaran (only for his sleep attributes).