Do you enjoy sleeping longer at weekends? Do you feel that you have to sleep for the same time you've not slept during the working week? Then you should know that a longer sleep at weekends may not be as beneficial for your performance in the next week as you think. According to the findings of a study the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph informed about, a longer sleep on Saturday and Sunday delays our internal clock so much that it is difficult for us to get up on Monday morning and we are sleepier in the following week.
The internal clock of the human body is guided by the circadian cycle (rotation of wakefulness and sleep). By sleeping longer on Saturday, we dealy our internal clock by up to two hours. We than have problems with falling asleep on Sunday and with getting up on Monday.
The study leader Gregory Carter, a sleep specialist from the Medical center of the University of Texas Southwestern, explains that it is much better to go to bed earlier than to sleep longer. According to him, any sleep debt from the work week disapperas after eight hours of sleep. "If we want to maintain our internal clock, we have to go to sleep eight hours before we will get up in the morning," said Carter.
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