Avoid a Long Afternoon Nap: If you've stayed up all-night, you may be tempted to take an extra-long nap the following afternoon. While a quick period of shut-eye is fine, try to keep it short. Sleeping for too long may make it hard to get to sleep that night and can more seriously throw off your sleep timing.
There's good news at the end of an all-nighter. Once you finally get to sleep again, you will sleep more deeply than usual, with more slow-wave sleep. “It's better to sleep until you just naturally wake up,” says Dinges, which means you may sleep 9 or 10 hours.
How long should I sleep after an all-nighter? Aim to go to bed about an hour earlier and sleep in up to an hour later the next day to start paying back debt without incurring too much circadian misalignment. Anything longer than that and you'll make it harder to get back to a normal sleep schedule.
Is it better to stay up all night? The answer to whether it is better to sleep for two hours or not at all is… neither. Staying awake all night poses health risks in the long and short term.
Elon Musk says he's upped his sleep to 6 hours per night—and that his old routine hurt his brain. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks with CNBC on May 16th, 2023.
Modern research suggests that sleeping twice in a 24-hour period (a sleep pattern that is alternately referred to as biphasic sleep, segmented sleep, or siesta sleep) may facilitate greater energy levels, alertness, cognitive function, and productivity.
After two days of no sleep, you can count on increased irritability, anxiety, foggy memory, and impaired thinking, says Hussam Al-Sharif, MD, a pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
"Staying up all night just once doesn't mean you'll develop one of these health conditions, but engaging in sleep deprivation can encourage poor sleep habits, which, over time, could ultimately impact your overall health," says Dr. Ram.
Moreover, brain scans of the participants who pulled all-nighters showed heightened activity in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain circuit driven by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that regulates positive feelings, motivation, sex drive, addiction, cravings and decision making.
In fact, the study's authors determined that a full night of interrupted sleep is equivalent to no more than four hours of consecutive sleep, in terms of how you'll likely feel and act the next day.
The two-nights rule stands, as long as two nights before your event is one of many nights during which you got enough sleep.
Disrupted Sleep-Wake Cycle
Although the Uberman sleep cycle is technically a type of sleep schedule, it may not be the best one for regulating your natural circadian rhythm. That's because it's based on random periods of sleep, requiring you to sleep during the day and be awake and active at night.
The thing the job is not known for, however, is a good night's sleep. With various board meetings and no shortage of pressure, rest can be hard to find. CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk get under six hours of sleep each night.
But the majority manage to get at least 6 hours, as you can see in the list below detailing the sleep habits of 10 highly successful people: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX: 6 hours (1am — 7am) Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: 7 hours (9:30pm — 4:30am) Bill Gates, Co-Founder of Microsoft: 7 hours (12am — 7am)
On average, he gets between four and five hours of sleep per night. Want to know how he manages? Keep reading to find out more about Donald Trump's sleep schedule.
If you can't sleep, don't try to, says Michael Perlis, PhD, director of the behavioral sleep medicine program at the University of Pennsylvania. “The problem with staying in bed for any appreciable amount of time is that this reinforces sleeplessness, physiologically and psychologically,” Perlis says.
A shocker for most, a study suggested that what may suit our bodies better than sleeping once a day is sleeping twice a day. Two shorter slumbers may suit our body clocks better than one long eight-hour sleep.
Is 3 hours enough? This will depend largely on how your body responds to resting this way. Some people are able to function on only 3 hours very well and actually perform better after sleeping in bursts. Though many experts do still recommend a minimum of 6 hours a night, with 8 being preferable.
This is because our brain is constantly forming new connections while we are awake. The longer we are awake, the more active our minds become.
"The overall best is if you can wake up naturally because you're done sleeping," he said. On the other hand, if you're waking up early on just a few hours of sleep, you should probably try and squeeze in some more shuteye.