As a person who rarely sleeps more than 5 hours every weeknight, I can appreciate a new study which indicates it is possible to catch up on sleep and reverse the damage lack of it causes, by sleeping in on the weekends. Well, it kind of works, apparently.

The study was a joint project of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the medical school at the University of Chicago. Granted, it was a limited study involving only 19 subjects, all of whom were male, but I choose to believe their results; which indicate the sleep-deprived guys insulin sensitivity (ability to regulate blood sugar) returned to healthy levels when they caught up on shut-eye.

A couple of doctors, (not involved in this particular study, but experts in the sleep science field), agreed the study is exciting in terms of its suggestion that "make-up sleep can reverse metabolic damage". But more people than not, are chronically sleep-deprived, (read that as long-term- -hello, over here!), the study was short-term in nature, and only involved young, healthy male subjects.

Both of these guys suggested further studies need to be done on a larger population of sleep-deprived humans, in particular overweight people who are more at risk for developing diabetes. But they'd also like to discover if make-up sleep has any positive effects on cognitive problems like confusion, irritability and memory loss.

Wow! I just totally lost my train of thought. Crap!

Oh yeah, I plan on sleeping in big time this weekend!

 

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