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Summary: Understanding Sleep Debt

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Summary: Understanding Sleep Debt
Understanding Sleep Debt In Sleep Debt and the Mortgaged Mind, William Dement discusses how to recognize the signs of dangerous sleepiness and urges the importance of education on sleep debt. Generally people need to sleep one hour for every two hours awake, and we need eight hours. The brain keeps an exact account of how much sleep it is owed. The brain tries to hit this mark, and the further you get from this number of hours the harder the brain tries to force you to go to sleep. We use the term “sleep debt” because an accumulated loss of sleep is like a monetary debt, and must be paid back. Sleep debt may accumulate in small increments over many days. As debt grows your energy, mood and cognition will be undermined. Misunderstanding

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