In a perfect world, we’d all get enough sleep each night. But it’s all too common to miss out on sleep and become sleep deprived.
Fortunately, there’s scientific evidence showing you can catch up on this missed sleep. It may just take longer than you think.
Below, we’ll cover how long it takes to recover from sleep deprivation and how you can use the RISE app to find out how sleep deprived you are and how to recover.
How long it takes to recover from sleep deprivation will all depend on how sleep deprived you are and how much extra sleep you can get. One study found one hour of sleep loss takes four days to recover from.
But it’s not always as straightforward as that. We all react differently to sleep loss, and your energy levels may bounce back in one timeframe, but your mental performance, for example, may take longer.
Here’s a look at what we know so far:
Let’s break that down in more detail:
If you spend a week getting only five hours of sleep a night, your energy, mood, and cognitive performance may recover after two nights of recovery sleep.
In this study, participants only got about five hours of sleep a night for seven nights. They then had two “recovery” nights of sleep.
The study measured mood, sleepiness, and cognitive performance and found all three got worse when participants were only getting five hours of shut-eye. But all three measures bounced back after the two recovery nights.
It may take six days for your work performance to recover after two nights of less than six hours of sleep.
Dr. Jamie Zeitzer is the co-director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford University, and he’s one of our sleep advisors. One of his studies found two consecutive nights of less than six hours of sleep can decrease your work performance for six days.
After six nights of six hours of sleep, your energy levels and certain health metrics may recover from sleep deprivation with three nights of 10 hours of sleep, but your mental performance may take longer.
In another study, participants got six hours of sleep for six nights and then 10 hours of sleep for three nights. Their sleepiness and levels of IL-6 (an inflammatory compound) increased when they were only getting six hours of sleep, but returned to normal after the three nights of 10 hours of sleep.
The caveat with this study is that participants’ cognitive performance didn’t bounce back. This could be because they didn’t get enough sleep to recover, however. More nights of recovery sleep may have helped.
High cortisol levels may return to normal if you take a two-hour nap after an all-nighter.
Some things may bounce back fast. One study found a two-hour nap after an all-nighter increased participants’ alertness and performance and reversed increased cortisol (your stress hormone), which the night of no sleep caused.
Depending on how sleep deprived you are, one week may not be long enough to fully recover. But then again, it could be, if you got a lot of sleep during this recovery week. More research needs to be done to know if it’s impossible, or just difficult!
Indeed, some sleep restriction studies paint a less certain picture. In a widely circulated 2021 study, participants got 30% less sleep than they needed, getting about five hours 18 minutes for 10 nights. This was followed by seven nights of recovery sleep. At the end of the experiment, reaction times bounced back to normal, but other factors (like accuracy) were still lower than usual, even after a whole week of recovery.
However, don’t let that fool you into thinking catching up on sleep is a myth. This study suggests you may not be able to fully recover from sleep deprivation in a week, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t if you had more than seven nights to catch up.
Another reason to be skeptical of the study’s claims regarding catch up sleep is that participants may not have been getting enough sleep during their recovery week to fully bounce back. The average sleep duration before the restriction period was about seven hours 37 minutes. And the average during the recovery period was about seven hours 36 minutes — not exactly what we’d call recovery. To catch up on sleep, you need to sleep for longer than you usually need.
Participants also spent their nights sleeping at home. This means many disruptions — think kids, early morning alarms, or a lumpy mattress — could be contributing to them not getting enough sleep to fully recover.
All this is to say that it’s hard to draw conclusions from studies like these. Without making sure participants get proper recovery sleep, we can’t know whether it’s impossible biologically to bounce back from sleep loss, or whether it’s just difficult to do in daily life.
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As you can see from the research, there's no set time for how long it takes to recover from sleep deprivation. Studies on the topic have different findings, and these findings come from varying amounts of sleep deprivation and lengths of recovery. This makes it hard — if not impossible — to say how long it takes to recover from sleep loss.
What we do know, however, is that the more sleep-deprived you are, the longer it will take to bounce back.
If you’d like a number to work with, the RISE app can tell you how many night’s it’ll take you to pay back your sleep deprivation if you follow the app’s recommended sleep times.
RISE works out how much sleep you need and how much sleep debt you have. The app uses a year’s worth of your phone use behavior and proprietary sleep-science-based models to determine your sleep need. It then tracks your sleep times and calculates how much sleep debt you have each day. Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you owe your body.
We measure sleep debt over 14 nights, but every night isn’t equal. We put more weight — 15% to be exact — on last night’s sleep as this is the night that has the biggest impact on how you’ll feel and function today. The remaining 85% comes from the previous 13 nights, with more recent nights having more weighting.
That means if you can’t recover from sleep deprivation in one go, any extra sleep you get tonight can help you feel better tomorrow, even if you’ve still got sleep debt to chip away at.
RISE’s smart schedule feature takes into account your chosen wake-up time, how much sleep you need, and how much sleep debt you have. The app then gives you a goal bedtime and tells you how long it’ll take to pay back your sleep debt. It may take a while to recover, but our users show you can start paying back sleep debt quickly. We found RISE users who pay back sleep debt manage to pay back more than four hours of sleep debt within the first two weeks of using the app.
And don’t worry about a small amount of sleep debt. We recommend you keep your sleep debt below five hours, as research suggests your mental performance with five hours of sleep debt will be close to what it would be with no sleep debt at all.
And with a goal of five hours, you don’t have to put so much pressure on every night of sleep being perfect — which, ironically, can cause more sleep loss.
Heads-up: Experts agree sleep debt is one of the most important sleep scores out there. Time spent in REM sleep and deep sleep, or sleep quality scores you get from apps and wearables, may be interesting, but it’s sleep debt that has the biggest impact on how you’ll feel each day.
There isn’t a clear answer on how long it takes to recover from chronic sleep debt, or if full recovery is even possible.
Long-term sleep debt builds up over months or years of consistently getting less sleep than your body needs. As it accumulates, it can lead to worsening energy levels, mood issues, and cognitive decline. Over time, it may contribute to more serious health problems, like weight gain, depression, and diabetes.
While studies show you can bounce back from the short-term effects of sleep deprivation, recovering from chronic sleep deprivation is more uncertain because research spanning decades is needed to draw definitive conclusions.
What we do know is that if you’ve accumulated long-term sleep debt, you likely also have short-term sleep debt. And as studies suggest you can catch up on short-term sleep deprivation, any extra sleep you can get will help you feel and function better – it just takes time and patience, and focus on improving your quality and quantity of sleep.
You can recover from sleep deprivation by sleeping more than you usually need. Do this by taking naps or sleeping for longer than usual at night. If your body needs eight hours of sleep, for example, getting nine hours of sleep for a few nights could help you recover from sleep deprivation.
Here’s how to fix sleep deprivation by paying down your sleep debt.
Daytime naps can help make up for lost sleep at night. Just be sure to keep your naps short and early enough in the day that you’ll be able to fall asleep at bedtime.
We recommend keeping naps to about 90 minutes or less (apart from extreme circumstances like when you’ve pulled an all-nighter), and napping during your afternoon dip in energy. RISE can tell you when this is each day.
Go to sleep earlier than usual to get some extra shut-eye.
Check RISE for when your natural evening peak in energy will be, as you’ll find it almost impossible to fall asleep during this time. Head to bed when your body’s more primed for sleep when your energy levels are dipping in the late evening.
For science-backed guidance on earlier bedtimes, use RISE’s smart schedule feature. It takes into account the time you need to wake up, your sleep need, and your sleep debt, and then gives you a bedtime that slowly shifts earlier to help you catch up on sleep.
Keep your lay-ins to an hour or so, or two hours if you really need it. Short lay-ins allow you to pay back some sleep debt without disrupting your circadian rhythm (your body clock), which can make it hard to fall asleep the next night.
RISE can nudge you into a later wake-up time when you need it. When you use the RISE alarm, it will tell you — as you’re setting it — whether your alarm time will add to your sleep deprivation or not. If it does, try setting a later alarm to get more sleep.
The best way to fix sleep deprivation is to try to accumulate as little sleep debt as possible. And maintaining good sleep hygiene is key to getting enough sleep for you each night.
Sleep hygiene is the set of daily habits that help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and get better sleep each night.
Here’s what to keep in mind.
To make it easy to maintain good sleep hygiene, RISE can remind you when to do 20+ healthy sleep habits each day at the time that makes them the most effective.
It’s not clear how long it takes to recover from an all-nighter. One study found one hour of sleep loss takes four days to recover from. Another study found a two-hour nap after an all-nighter can reverse increased cortisol levels caused by the night of sleep deprivation. But we all react differently to sleep loss, and your energy levels may bounce back in one timeframe, but your mental performance, for example, may take longer.
It’s not clear how long it takes to recover from months of sleep deprivation, or if full recovery is even possible. You may be able to recover from short-term sleep deprivation, however, which you build up over about two weeks. It can take four days to recover from one hour of sleep loss, so the more sleep deprived you are, the longer it’ll take to bounce back.
It’s not clear how long it takes to recover from years of sleep deprivation, or if full recovery is even possible. You may be able to recover from acute sleep deprivation, though, so any extra sleep you get will help improve your energy levels, mood, and cognitive performance. Just remember that the more sleep deprived you are, the more nights of good sleep it’ll take to bounce back.
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