ATLANTA (CNN) – After a long day at home, Hadly Clark spends her evenings sliding mindlessly on the phone. She usually works at 9:30 pm in bed, in favor of online shopping and social networking.
Before Clark knows this, the clock reads 1 in the morning. Finally, he goes to bed and wakes up the next morning exhausted, the phone on the nightstand ringing with the alarm at 6 in the morning.
This cycle of staying up late and regretting the next day is too familiar to many people, even before the pandemic. In recent years, the phenomenon has been dubbed “bedtime retaliation revenge.”
Postponing bedtime revenge may be a newer term, but the type of sleep program he describes is not, said Dr. Rajkumar Dasgupta, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
“Postponing revenge at bedtime is just a cry from overworked people and, in fact, they are trying to postpone bedtime for a while so that they can claim something for themselves,” Dasgupta said.
It’s normal for people to want time for themselves at night, but it becomes a problem if they are tired during waking hours due to lack of sleep, he said.
Clark, an associate director at FasterCures, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, said she had no trouble falling asleep until the pandemic forced her to work from home. Her internal clock wakes her up between 5:30 and 7 in the morning, no matter how late she stays up, so she had to resort to coffee and soda to stay awake during the day, she said.
Her days used to follow consistent routines, but since the pandemic hit, Clark said she has struggled to create a nightly routine. She attributed it in part to the fact that she did not want to accept the existence of the pandemic.
“If I adapt to the new way of life, it’s like I accept that this is the reality and I don’t want it to be,” Clark said.
Brian Sinclair, a software engineer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said postponing his revenge at bedtime stole his sleep long before the pandemic hit. It started about five years ago, when the second child was born, leaving him with less time for himself, he said.
“There’s a lot of lack of control in my life,” Sinclair said, and the evening hours are when he says he’s taking control. He often wakes up playing video games or falling into a rabbit hole on YouTube, he said.
Why people do it
Staying up late wandering around or watching TV could be someone’s attempt to reduce stress, said Vaile Wright, senior director of health innovation at the American Psychological Association.
“We know that just mindlessness and the fact that we don’t interact in a significant way actually increase our stress, as opposed to reducing it,” Wright said.
People could also have a hard time closing at the end of the workday because the boundaries have been blurred since the pandemic began, she said.
Sinclair, who currently works for Indeed, is a veteran who works from home and has been commuting for over a decade. However, his work schedule changed when the pandemic struck to accommodate his children’s online learning.
We know that just mindlessness and the fact that we do not interact in a significant way actually increases our stress, as opposed to reducing it.
–Vaile Wright, American Psychological Association
He spends part of the morning helping his son with online school because the 8-year-old finds it difficult to concentrate, Sinclair said. After that, he gives his wife responsibility for most of the day.
The consequences of the condition until late
Not getting enough sleep leads to lack of sleep, which can affect your mental and physical health, Dasgupta said. He said some common consequences are decreased productivity and increased cortisol, a stress hormone.
When you go to bed significantly later and wake up around the usual time, you risk accumulating sleep debt from lost hours, according to Dasgupta. The only way to get rid of sleep debt is to sleep the number of hours you lost, which says it is not possible for most people.
Studies show that closing your eyes at the weekend is not the most effective way to compensate for lost sleep. People failed to compensate for the effects of poor sleep during the week – such as snacking, weight gain and disrupted circadian rhythms – sleeping on weekends, according to a 2019 study published in Current Biology.
Researchers have found that if someone sleeps on the weekends, but the quality of sleep is poor, they tend to overeat and gain weight.
The amount of sleep that someone should get is different for each person, but in general, adults should get seven to eight hours of sleep a night, Dasgupta said.
Using technology late at night can also affect our sleep, he said. The screens emit a blue light, which Dasgupta said suppresses the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps control your sleep cycle.
How not to sabotage your sleep schedule
It is completely normal for the sleep schedule to be imperfect, especially during a pandemic, Dasgupta said. He recommended that people go to sleep both physically and mentally.
Dasgupta said most people like the “quiet, dark and cool” bedroom. He also suggested that people engage in an activity they enjoy, such as meditation, which helps them fall asleep.
Electronic shutdown and not bringing them to bed is another strategy to fall asleep, he said.
A strategic nap could also reduce a person’s sleep debt, according to Dasgupta. He recommended a 15- to 20-minute nap between noon and 2 p.m.
During the day, people should push their limits and schedule their own time, Wright said. Clark said she works to schedule breaks on her day to do activities such as exercise.
She said this would help her “have time to breathe and be good for my physical and mental health.”
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