For many young people, similar scenarios play out nightly. Surveys reveal that 69.3% of young adults sleep past 11 PM, while 52.5% actively choose to stay up late.[1]
Burning the midnight oil leaves them exhausted by day, naturally seeking ways to catch up on sleep.Napping against subway walls, catching a quick snooze at lunch, even resting on the toilet... the methods are endless.
After a short nap, many feel their productivity returns, their minds fully recharged. But is catching up on sleep after staying up late truly effective? Recent research may provide an answer.
Staying up late and napping during the day? It still harms your cognition!
Like me, many people think staying up late is no big deal—just find time for a nap during the day, and it won't harm your body. But that's not the case.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Michigan State University conducted a sleep-cognition experiment involving 275 participants. On the first night, all participants completed cognitive learning tasks (placeholder task, vigilance attention task).
Participants were then randomly assigned to three groups:Group 1 went home to sleep; Group 2 stayed awake all night without napping; Group 3 stayed up late but was allowed a 30- or 60-minute nap. The next morning, all participants repeated the cognitive learning tasks.
Results showed that compared to the home-sleep group, the delayed-sleep group made more errors in cognitive learning tasks. The nap provided little benefit.
Thus, staying up late and napping during the day cannot fully mitigate the cognitive damage caused by sleep deprivation.[2] The related paper was published in the journal Sleep on June 22, 2021.This demonstrates that staying up late and napping during the day cannot fully mitigate the cognitive damage caused by sleep deprivation.[2] The related paper was published in the journal Sleep on June 22, 2021.
Stop staying up late! It harms your brain and your whole body, and catching up on sleep won't help either.Meanwhile, a study published in Current Biology on February 28, 2019, revealed that catching up on sleep cannot compensate for the metabolic issues caused by sleep deprivation.
The 9-day experiment divided participants into three groups: a normal sleep group (9 hours daily), a sleep-deprived group (5 hours daily), and a weekend-catchup group (5 hours daily for the first 5 days,followed by two days of unrestricted sleep over the weekend, and finally five hours of sleep per day for the last two days.
During the experiment, participants in the weekend catch-up sleep group consumed fewer calories over the weekend. However, their energy intake remained high during other periods, resulting in no overall reduction in energy consumption. Consequently, their weight continued to increase. Worse still, compared to the sleep-deprived group, they exhibited lower insulin sensitivity.
[3] This demonstrates that catch-up sleep has limited effectiveness in addressing metabolic issues caused by sleep deprivation, such as weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity.[3] This demonstrates that catch-up sleep offers little benefit against metabolic issues caused by sleep deprivation, such as weight gain and reduced insulin sensitivity.
Folks, don't stay up late—getting to bed early is the way to go.