Losing Sleep

Skimping on shut-eye makes you dumb, fat, forgetful, and a lot more likely to hit stuff with your car. And yet, most of us trim at least an hour off the proverbial eight. According to Scientific American, the math is easy. For every minute we jip ourselves, we add a minute to our ever-increasing “sleep debt,” or the accumulating “sleepiness” we carry around with us. And a catnap might not be enough to fix it.

Sleep researchers suggest that it could take considerably more effort for the chronically sleep deprived. The only way to make up for lost time is to go to sleep when you’re tired and wake up when you wake up, perhaps devoting ten hours to sleep for months at a time – a scary concept for those of us penciling sleep in pretty low on the priority list. But, it could be with worth it in the long run: "When you put away sleep debt, you become superhuman," Stanford psychologist William C. Dement to Scientific American.

For a step-by-step guide to reclaiming that elusive eighth hour, don’t miss Outside’s June issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

-Claire Napier Galofaro