A new study found that about 75% of people with sleep debt are not able to make up for their sleep deprivation by napping or by sleeping in on the weekends.
The finding centered on adults who regularly get only six hours of sleep or less on weekdays. That’s far less than the seven to eight hours per night that most people need, said study author Dr. Damien Leger. He is chief of the Hotel Dieu Center of Sleep and Vigilance at the Public Assistance Hospital of Paris.
Such “short sleepers” made up over one-third of more than 12,000 participants in the study. And nearly one-quarter said they had been racking up a very serious weekday “sleep debt.” That meant that on weekdays they logged at least 90 minutes less than the amount of sleep they really needed.
