Too Much Sleep Can Affect Concentration
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
One of the reasons why students or working people look forward to the weekend is to catch up on sleep.
Overwhelmed by a busy schedule, it is often difficult to get seven hours sleep a day, the ideal for grownups.
And so come the weekend many find themselves still in bed well into the late afternoon.
However, even though you get lots of rest during the daytime on weekends, you may still feel tired, even more so the next day.
Experts say that making up for lost sleep during weekdays over the weekend will simply have you feeling excessively tired, just as you would feel when adjusting to different time zones.
Our internal clock, which is located in the hypothalamus, controls the body's balance of sleep and alertness.
If human's ``override'' their normal sleep times, it can offset their internal time clock, having a negative impact on their next day.
``If you sleep too much and wake up much later than usual during the day, your body's time clock will take it as your new sleep pattern and your time for sleep or awakening can become delayed. Hence, after sleeping much in the day, it will become very difficult for you to wake up at the usual awakening time the next day, and even if you wake up, you will feel very tired and sleepy,'' said Shin Won-cheol, a professor and doctor specializing in sleep at Kyunghee Dongseo New Medical Center. ``Their changed sleep pattern can decrease the concentration power of working people or students who need to work on a regular basis.''
Oh Seung-hon, a professor and doctor at Bundang Cha Hospital also said that if you sleep too much during the day on weekends, you will feel tired on Monday.
``Work effectiveness might decrease due to lack of concentration power on Monday morning. Also you might become too sensitive in little things due to lack of sleep. According to recent research, you can experience headaches or dizziness.''
Professor Shin says that if you lack sleep during weekdays, it's better to find other ways to catch up than sleeping late on the weekend.
``If you want to compensate for your lack of sleep during weekdays, it would be better to sleep one or two hours earlier than usual at night. That way, you can set your time clock a little bit earlier and will then have no problem waking up the next morning.''
Experts say that the best way is to maintain an appropriate amount of sleeping hours and monitor your alert time effectively. However, if you still find yourself lacking sleep, experts recommend a small amount of daytime sleep around two o'clock in the day.
``About 10 to 20 minutes of daytime sleep can be effective for overcoming human's fatigue but longer sleep can disturb sleep during the night, hence destroying the sleep cycle,'' said Shin.
In conclusion, experts say that, rather than having a great amount of daytime sleep, it is important to secure enough time for sleep during night hours. It is also important to keep one's sleep cycle from being destroyed by trying to avoid sleeping excessively during the weekend.
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