Your Sleep Debt Bank Account...(start saving!)

The effect of each night's sleep on your health is cumulative- in other words, you can liken your lack or excess of sleep to an open bank account. Each of us maintains this personal sleep bank account: any sleep you get is a deposit, or an asset, while any hour of wakefulness is a withdrawal, or a debt. As every hour you spend awake increases your sleep debt, you must continually make sleep deposits in your account.

Most people need at least 8 hours of sleep in the account to cancel out the debt incurred by sixteen hours of alertness.

It may surprise you but, when we say sleep loss is cumulative, we mean it! A one hour sleep loss every night for a week is the equivalent to having pulled one all-nighter! Therefore, you can't repay weeks of sleep debt by getting adequate sleep for one night, any more than you can compensate for years of overeating by a one-day diet.

HOW MUCH SLEEP IS REQUIRED FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE?

So how much sleep do we need to be in perfect balance- to experience a total sense of - and be fully prepared for optimal performance?

While most of us can survive on eight hours of sleep, we are simply not our best. Even though most of us feel okay, we might unknowingly be carrying around years of accumulated sleep debt. People who take the time to find out what their sleep requirements are and then do the necessary things to get a good night's sleep almost always experience a profound positive difference in terms of their mood, cognitive ability, and overall well-being.

"Wow! I never knew what it was like to be AWAKE before!"