Can the body "store" sleep?

No better place to ask about sleep than a truck forum, right?

So I work fucked up hours and go to class during the mornings. I'll get 9 hours of sleep three nights a week, followed by three nights where I only need to sleep 4 hours and one night of around 6-8. I usually work out 5 days a week, usually in the evening before my 9 hour/6-8 hours of sleep days.

Is this normal?

 

No. You build up sleep debt.

You need 8-10 hours of sleep per night. You can avarage that out throughout the week and say thats 56-70 hours per week.

If you aren’t getting that then you end up going into sleep debt. If you get 50 hours one week your body wants the missing 6 and then you need 62-70 hours the next week to be on par.

This is why odd shift work and screwy hours is bad for a persons health long term.

Most people who function off a weird clock end up with some form of sleep deprivation over time.

I used to work 2-3 part time jobs ontop of my full time job for a while to save up for my Tacoma.
I was working 10-6 but also odd 5am-9am shifts and 6:30pm to 12pm shifts, sometimes back to back.
Did this almost 2 years.
It took me about 6-8 months to recover after I stopped.
It was eye opening how much sleep I was missing.

Everyone can handle it to different extremes but its definitely not something you want to make a permanent lifestyle.

 

Govt says 3hrs a day is enough fwiw.
Don't thank me, thank your recruiter

 

inconsistency leads to inconsistency. sleep is the one thing that can effortlessly normalize you. you're young so you can get away with that kind of inconsistency for now before dysfunction ensues later. at that point you'll be extremely well-trained in inconsistent behavior patterns and it will not be automatic or remotely easy to change and find any kind of consistent rhythm. your later health depends on your early health and what you do to create & maintain it. and you're not doing that. the price you'll be paying as you age will get you wishing you made better efforts earlier. because the cost later is the more than the cost now.

 

Sleep debt is real and a thing, as stated above. But not everyone needs 8-10 hrs, and its more realistically 6-10. What matters more than the length of time you sleep is the depth of your sleep. The sleep cycle is 4 stages, one of them being REM. Most people need 4-6 full cycles a night from a medical physiology standpoint, and each cycle takes roughly 90min to complete.

There is a small but growing trend for people who have flexible enough schedules to only sleep 2-6 hrs per day, but as short naps throughout the day. This works because they're training their bodies to get into the more beneficial stages of sleep faster, so basically they're sleeping more efficiently. And they're taking a nap every 4-6 hrs, never sleeping through a full night.

If you feel great on those nights you're getting 4 hrs, it might be because your body only needs 7hrs physiologically, and the 9hr nights make up for it. Or you've been doing that schedule for long enough that you've "trained" your body to get more efficient sleep. Most people don't have the discipline or the time availability to train their body to become more efficient at sleep. Think about people who work swing shifts (I did for three years), go through the week exhausted, but then let their bodies reset when they crash for 10-12 hrs on the weekend.

Also - excessive alcohol does help you get to sleep, but it prevents you from reaching N3 and REM (N1,N2,N3, REM are the 4 stages of sleep). So don't use it to fall asleep.

 

I average 7 hours nowadays...in my 20s I could get away with less but then "catch up" pretty easily if I needed to (sleep in).

Around the time I turned 31 a couple years ago, I started noticing that my body needs a regular sleep schedule. I can't sleep in anymore, I wake up right around the same time every day no matter how late I go to bed. I think it's more important the older you get to give yourself a regular sleep schedule if you can, or at least try and average the same number of hours every day if possible.

 

Great thread. I lived on less than 4 hours a sleep in my early 20s. Full time school. 12 hours a day at work trying make that money. All was good until I fell asleep in the car one day on the way home. Totaled my Civic and got VERY lucky to walk away.

I agree you can get sleep debt, but you never build a balance. After doing it for years, I'm a 5-6 hours a night max guy. Generally feel ok, but I'll bet you I'm aging faster than if I got 8-9 hours. Simply not enough hours in the day to get everything done. I'll bet the majority of opinions on the forum are less than 7 hours a sleep per night. Might be a world wide epidemic.

 

No, you cant store up sleep. People do what they need to do. There was a time I could drink late into the night, get up the next day mostly functional. I can't do that anymore.

 

Everyone is different, but the consensus of app. 8 hours per night holds true.
Personally, I find that every hour I stay up past ten at night equates to 2 "lost" hours the next day. (ie, if I stay up until 3, the next day is a write off.)
Depends on the time of year, quality of sleep and other factors, but I just love my 9 hours, and it allows me to be bright eyed and bushy tailed the next day.

 

I can't go to bed before midnight, even now in my 30s. I have to be asleep before 1 though or I risk staying awake another few hours, like my body thinks it needs to activate it's energy reserves or something.

I'm fortunate though I don't have to be at work until 9 - 930 and I live 5 miles away. That helps, lol.

 

Appreciate the run down man!

The worst part is, my sleep schedule isn't even that bad right now. I'm in school currently, but in a little while I'm going to be working my 9-5 again, my main side job and my seasonal landscaping business at the same time.

I'm starting fire school next year, when I'm done with that I'll be working 24 hour shifts which I'm sure won't help.

 

I work rotating 12 hour shifts and I can certainly attest to sleep debt.

By the end of my night rotations I am a zombie but I can usually sleep that feeling off my first night off.

If I could “store” sleep, I would do nothing but sleep on my days off lol.

 

I use to work a rotating panama schedule (basically 1st week your days off are Wed & Thurs; 2nd week you only work Wed & Thurs) and we would switch from days to nights every tour (Day shift first, then your days off, then when you come back to work for next tour, you are on night shift). It was hell and this was all thru my early 20s. Age where you can stay up all night and such. I had such a f*** up sleep pattern there is no way to tell you what was normal.

Late 20s to present now, I work the same panama schedule with the same days off, but straight day shift for the last 7 years or so. Its quite nice; I wake up at 4 am on days I work, and around 6-7 on my days off (and I'm actually more sleepy after waking when I sleep until 7 am like that). I am in bed for 10pm and rarely stay up later than that. Even on times when I do stay up later, such as midnight or even till 1am (thanks playstation) I am still waking up by 7am.
Another side effect is I feel healthier, ex: I don't get sick as when I did the rotating shifts. I don't know if sleeping better or more consistently has anything to do with that but I like to think it does. Another side effect, gross maybe, but my bathroom schedule is much improved. When on rotating shifts with random times and hours of sleep, I never knew when I would need to go #2 and was constipated frequently. I don't have that problem now and go #2 in the morning every day. I hope this doesn't seem funny or silly to some, because being constipated is a serious health issue, and random sleep patterns and lack of sleep can contribute to it I believe.

Unfortunately I am about to have to start rotating between day shift and night shift again, but thankfully it is for a month at a time. So it might be difficult to adjust at the beginning, but hopefully it will be better than rotating every couple of days...you can never get adjusted to it.

In college they told us when you "loose" sleep, its lost. Sleeping more later doesn't make up for it, you don't get that lost sleep back. Even if you get less hours of sleep than recommended, its better to have a set consistent sleep pattern.