Maybe…it is time to ….
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Doctors recommend at least seven hours of sleep a night. What if you get less?
Xiaoyu Li and team from Tsinghua University tracked eighty-five thousand adults for a week. They grouped the participants based on hours of sleep lost and recovery the following night. Then, they tracked participants’ mortality over eight years.
Who was most at risk? Those who lost more than three-and-a-half hours of sleep over seven days. The good news? Gaining an extra hour the next night fully offset the danger, restoring risk to baseline.
Who knew? Sleep debt is real, but luckily your body accepts late payments!
Li, X., Zhang, M., Li, Z., Zhang, S., Bertisch, S. M., Huang, T., Rutter, M. K., & Redline, S. (2026). Acute sleep rebound following sleep restriction is associated with reduced mortality risk. Nature Communications, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72461-1