Is it good to bank sleep ahead of sleepless night shifts?

Some scientists have found out if one stockpiles sleep ahead of working, sleepless nights, it can have positive effects on those who are chronically sleep deprived.

Sleep reserves are comparable to a charging battery. If one charges the phone overnight ahead of going on a trip next morning, the battery can last for an adequate period of time without one having to look for an electric socket to plug the phone in during the journey.

Likewise, some experts are encouraging people to fill up their sleep reserves for scarcity nights. 

They are speculating if banking extra hours of sleep ahead of a busy night can counteract the ill effects of sleepless nights.

As per LocalCircles, 46 percent of surveyed Indians were getting less than six hours of uninterrupted sleep in the last 12 months.

Sleep banking and night shift workers

Sleep banking can be described as extending normal hours of sleep on some nights leading to a known sleep deprived period, for instance, an upcoming night shift.

A study done on internal medicine residents aimed to identify sleep strategies used by night shift workers and their effectiveness on their work performance.

In the experiment, the residents were asked to log their sleep hours starting three hours prior to their first night shift and continuing through the next eight days.

The study found that those who ‘banked’ sleep before a night shift performed better and were less likely to feel impaired in the week ahead.

Their tiredness was compared to the intoxication of 0.05 percent alcohol in the bloodstream. 

For emergency physicians, doctors who tend to medical emergencies, alertness plays a huge role in fast decision making.

Speaking to DH, Dr Yagna, an emergency physician at AIG hospitals (Hyderabad) said: “As an emergency physician, we have to be alert like a hound and on our toes at odd hours. This includes long night shifts with heavy patient load. In our practice, we often catch up three to four hours of sleep in the daytime to function optimally at night. So, in a way we do bank some sleep here and there. It keeps us going.”

Emergency doctors also try to get one or more power naps in the night or swap turns with other colleagues to avoid decision fatigue which is very common in the profession, he added.

The expert also informed that the average life expectancy of an emergency physician is 55 to 58 years because of a high stress working environment and a monumental sleep debt.

Loan or repaying debt?

For theories promoting ‘banking sleep’, there have been contradictions around whether over sleeping helps the body increase the sleep reserves or does it compensate for the already existing sleep dept.

Differentiating between banking sleep and recovery sleep is still blurred, said experts.

As per Psychology Today, humans are not designed to sleep when they are not supposed to sleep, particularly when there is no physiological urge to sleep.

Sleep pressure, the homeostatic urge to sleep when one is awake for long is absent when one forcefully tries to sleep.

Some studies have suggested that night shift workers are more likely to sleep shorter during daytime as the sleep is not physiologically supported by the circadian cycle (biological clock of the body).

It could be safe to assume that night shift workers carry a sleep debt.

As per standards, an adult needs on average 7 to 9 hours of sleep to function adequately during the day.