When we chase time, we often end up sacrificing our nights. However, a simple biological mechanism allows you to reprogram your brain. A sleep doctor explains.
“I would like to sleep more but I don’t have time.” If this thought has ever crossed your mind, it’s probably because you’re dealing with chronic exhaustion linked to sleep debt. This phenomenon has a name: “social jetlag”. It’s an invisible time difference that deprives energy on a daily basis. Result: fatigue accumulates and the nights no longer restore enough. To understand how to get out of this spiral and finally recover, a sleep expert gave us his essential advice.
Why do we feel like we don’t have enough time to get enough sleep? Because “social constraints, primarily professional” replies Professor Pierre Philip, head of the university sleep medicine department at Bordeaux University Hospital. Once the working day is over, there is “an increasing propensity to favor more or less late bedtimes” to take time for yourself. These hours stolen at night create a debt by “compensatory mechanism”. The trap is to think that you can catch up on everything on the weekend, with a lie-in or a nap. Social jetlag is stubborn: this debt accumulated during the week “is not completely compensated on weekends”.
The solution comes down to a single reflex: set a strict and identical waking time every day. “The lifting time must be regular”insists the expert. This is the only variable you really control. “If I ask you to wake up at 7:38 a.m., no problem, you will be able to do it with an alarm clock. But if I ask you to fall asleep at 10:59 p.m., that’s impossible”explains Professor Philip. You can’t command your brain to turn off, but you can decide when the day begins.
By stabilizing your awakening, the biological mechanics put itself back into place. This morning rigor will naturally condition the time at which fatigue will overtake you the following evening. If you are deficient, the pressure to sleep will be such that your body will demand rest sooner. If you have to get up at 7 a.m. for example, it will become physiological to fall asleep before midnight to respect the vital need of the majority of people, located between 7 and 9 a.m.
Last point of vigilance: weekend management. If a slight flexibility is allowed, delaying your alarm clock beyond an hour is harmful to your rhythm. “We know that we double our risk of depression, we double the risk of infection and we increase the metabolic risk”warns Professor Philip. So stay the course, because “good sleep is every day”concludes the expert.
Thanks to Professor Pierre Philip, head of the university sleep medicine department at Bordeaux University Hospital and author of the book “Antidéprime” (ed. Albin Michel).
