Many of us occasionally give up an extra hour of sleep to hit the gym before work or join an early morning meeting.
But have you ever noticed that despite sleeping less, you’re actually more awake than usual?
It’s an intriguing conundrum that’s been explored recently in certain corners of the internet, including Reddit and TikTok.
In a video that has been viewed more than 30,000 times, TikToker Nathan Beaudinn asked his followers why he has “a lot more energy” when he sleeps less.
Meanwhile, on the Reddit forum website, a user asked: “How come I feel less tired and more energetic when I wake up if I sleep less than seven hours, and if I sleep more, I wake up feeling miserable?”
Now, experts speaking to DailyMail.com have revealed the fascinating answer.
For most people, sleeping between seven and nine hours a night is key to physical and mental health.
Dr. Ankit Parekh studies how people cope with sleep apnea and the effects of a poor night’s rest. In his research, he discovered that patients’ brains work harder to keep them alert when they are sleep deprived. This could contribute to giving them the false perception that they are more awake.
They say it’s all due to compensatory tricks performed by the brain designed to compensate for lack of sleep.
“This helps you get through the day, but it’s not a good productivity hack.” Dr. Chester Wusaid a psychiatrist and sleep specialist in Houston.
According to the National Institute of Health, sleeping between seven and nine hours a night is ideal for optimal physical and mental health.
Any less than that and your body, brain and behavior will adjust to keep you moving when you’re not fully rested, Dr. Ankit Parekh, assistant professor of sleep medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told DailyMail.com. .
This involves producing additional “vigilant” chemicals that keep the body alert and temporarily increase attention span, Dr. Parekh said. For example, cortisol, known as the stress hormone, and adrenaline.
After a healthy night’s sleep, most people’s cortisol levels peak in the morning and slowly fall throughout the day, according to Dr. David Rosenbergwho practices family medicine in Florida.
But when you sleep less than you need, you can disrupt this cycle, causing your body to produce cortisol at unnatural times, such as later in the day.
This may give the impression that your energy levels are higher than usual during the afternoon or evening, Dr. Parekh said.
However, if you are constantly inundated with stress hormones, they can begin to wear on your body.
Chronically high levels of cortisol, for example, can lead to high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, and high blood sugar levels leading to type 2 diabetes. according to the Cleveland Clinic.
It also puts extra pressure on your brain cells and prevents them from working properly, making you feel more tired in the long run.
“You may feel like you are more alert when you sleep less,” Dr. Parekh said. “But the longer you stay awake on that short amount of sleep, you’ll start to feel its effects and pretty soon you’ll realize you need to recover.”
Studies show that cognitive performance plummets if you don’t get enough sleep, even if you think you’re alert.
A study from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard found that volunteers who have slept poorly and performed poorly on learning tests say they feel perfectly awake.
This suggested, the scientists wrote, that participants were “largely unaware” of the increasing effects of sleep deprivation.
Dr. Parekh says brain scan studies show that those who are sleep deprived have to work much harder to concentrate than people who get a good night’s sleep.
Sleep needs change with age and individual preferences, but professionals almost never recommend sleeping less than seven hours a night.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously only needed four hours of sleep a night to function. She could have had short sleep syndrome, an extremely rare condition in which people need to sleep six hours or less a night and seem to function perfectly well.
Another reason you may feel more awake after sleeping less is because you unconsciously seek out more substances that stimulate your brain when you’re sleep-deprived.
If you drink coffee most mornings, for example, you may be drinking an extra cup without realizing it. The more caffeine you drink, the more alert you will probably feel.
Finally, there is a very small chance that you belong to a rare group of people who function well on less sleep than the average human being, Dr. Parekh said.
Scientists aren’t sure how many people fall into this category (people affected by short sleep syndrome), but they have only found it conclusively in about 50 families around the worldaccording to the Cleveland Clinic.
It is believed to be a rare genetic mutation that is passed from parents to children, not something that develops in life.
Short sleepers miraculously get four to six hours of sleep a night and still feel energized. They also tend not to need alarm clocks and find it easy to fall asleep at night.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously is said to have fallen into this category and only needed four hours of sleep a night.
But if you’re part of the vast majority of people who need more than four hours, over time you’ll start to feel the effects of consistently sleeping less.
In the short term, you’ll likely have trouble concentrating, learning, and responding to other people’s emotions if you spend less than eight hours. according to the NIH.
You may also feel frustrated and moody more easily than normal, which can make socializing difficult.
The body also becomes more inflamed when we don’t sleep, Dr. Parekh said, which puts a strain on all of our internal systems, from the brain to the heart.
This is probably part of the reason why, in the long term, getting less sleep has been linked to heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity, depression and high blood pressure, according to the NIH.
It can also increase the likelihood of being involved in accidents such as car accidents.
That said, Dr. Parekh and other sleep specialists caution that the importance of sleep should not be overlooked.
