Sleeping does more harm than good

It’s the weekend. You go to bed early and look forward to finally falling asleep. Besides, by getting up later (maybe even in the afternoon), you don’t get much rest and you end up feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck or even hungover. In short, you sleep and sleep a lot.

Although this condition is similar to a hangover, it has nothing to do with the condition you can get from consuming too much alcohol. Rather, it is due to a disruption in the part of the brain that controls the day-night cycle.

To summarize: By napping, you disrupt your sleep-wake rhythm, even though you may think you’re finally doing well by getting enough sleep.

The internal biological clock is located in a small region of the brain called the hypothalamus. The latter regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature and many other functions as well as the sleep-wake cycle. Thanks to the ambient light, the brain recognizes that it is morning and sends signals to keep all the cells of the body in the same rhythm. In the evening, it sends other signals to stimulate the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone.

All these processes are done automatically. By suddenly sleeping too long, you disrupt your internal biological clock and you feel more tired than if you slept less. It’s like someone suffering from jet lag: the body is somehow stuck in another time zone.

That’s why good sleep hygiene involves a regular rhythm. And not necessarily more sleep. A large-scale study published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society It has been found that individuals who sleep nine to eleven hours a night are less likely to suffer from memory problems and cardiovascular disease during their lifetime than those who sleep eight hours straight. But another study shows that sleep deprivation also has a detrimental effect on health.

Although it’s not always easy to get more or less hours of sleep each night, you should make sure it’s as regular as possible. As Harvard Medical School writes on its website: “The best solution is to determine and stick to the number of hours of sleep appropriate for each individual, including weekends, holidays, and vacations.”