The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Marc L. Benton, MD, Director of In-Patient Sleep Services, Summit Medical Group, to talk about the importance of a good night's sleep.

9/5/19 #2240

Excerpt:

"Here we go folks. This is Dr. Marc Benton, Medical Director, In-Patient Sleep Services at Summit Medical Group. Good to see you Doctor. Nice to meet you. Some people have told me a little bit... I'm not going to make this about me. They say you can be a little cranky on tape day. You know, and I realized, hey, last night I didn't go to sleep till about one o'clock, thinking about today. Got up early, tried to exercise, I figured, "Doesn't matter how much sleep I got, I'll be fine." I'm starting... it's the middle of the afternoon. I'm fading. What's up? The amount of sleep you get matters and the quality of the sleep that you get matters. Most of us don't get enough, and a lot of us don't get restoratively enough. And it does affect you. No question about it. 8 hours is not happening. 8 hours happens for some. The average person, adult... 6 1/2 to 8 hours, 8 1/2 hours would be enough if we're able to get it. And again, it has to be good. But you're right. A lot of people don't get 8 hours. A lot of people don't get anywhere near that. And unfortunately, you can't make it up on weekends, particularly when you're an adult. You have to... Time out. Back up. I'm sorry for interrupting. You gotta go back. What do you mean you can't make it up? I've been thinking I'm making it up on weekends all the time. You can try, but it doesn't really work. You end up with a sleep debt. And by the end of the... you're... let's say Thursday, Friday, you're sort of a mess. So if you slept for 5 hours and you say, "Listen, I'm going to sleep in a little later on the weekend," and you do it one or two times, and you made up those hours and together it adds up to 6 1/2, it doesn't work, does it? It doesn't work that way. By the end of the week, you're in a sleep debt. Which affects you cognitively and physically. You'll feel better on the weekend when you sleep longer, but it won’t help you any later in the week. Go back. You said it hurts us cognitively. What do you mean? Any situation with sleep deprivation based on either not getting enough sleep or getting poor sleep will affect you cognitively. So let's say that your body needs 7 or 8 hours of sleep. If you get 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night, every night, on a consistent basis, or even average it out over a week, there's a cumulative debt that occurs. And what could end up happening is that, once you're full into that debt, you'll be in a situation where... and they've looked at this cognitively, in terms of reaction time. You're functioning..."