Chronic sleep deprivation - which means not getting adequate sleep for several nights in a row - results in cognitive performance problems, behaviour changes and emotional disturbances
Studies have found that if you haven't slept well for a few days, and end up sleeping for a longer time, you may 'feel' refreshed, but your brain is still suffering from the harmful effects of poor sleep. It takes more than 5 days of 8-hour sleep to fully recover from chronic sleep deprivation.
This is also important for people who work long hours during the week, thinking that the weekend sleep will 'fix' their sleep debt. This is not the case.
Basically, we first underestimated how important sleep is to health, and now we are underestimating how important the duration and frequency of sleep is.
