Chronic sleep deficit is affecting millions of us – here’s how to fix it

It’s official: we’re a nation with a chronic sleep deficit. In fact, new statistics released early this year as part of Direct Line Life Insurance’s ‘Need for Sleep’ campaign found that insomnia has doubled since the pandemic began, with just over a third (35%) of adults consistently struggle to remain asleep through the night, and a further third (33%) find themselves regularly waking earlier than planned. 

This results in hours of lost sleep every night and while we tend to think that this can be fixed with a solid seven or eight hours the following night or a “sleep binge” at the weekends, our bodies are far more complex and need a lot more time to recover. One study found that it takes four days to fully recover from just one hour of lost sleep.

A chronic lack of sleep creates a ‘sleep deficit’ in which our bodies can’t catch up. Most of us try and make it up on Saturday and Sunday, but sleeping too long on the weekends mean we find it hard to drift off on Sunday night, and the cycle of sleep starvation continues.

“Sleep deficit – or sleep debt – is the increased effect of us not meeting our individual sleep need in terms of quantity and quality,” explains sleep expert James Wilson, AKA The Sleep Geek, co-founder of wellbeing platform Beingwell. “I prefer the term ‘sleep deficit’ as the use of the word ‘debt’ gives the impression it can be ‘paid off’, which we often try and do on our days off with a lie in. This inconsistent routine then impacts on both the quality and quantity of sleep and we get into a cycle of poor sleep driven by these behaviours.”

“The stress and anxiety of the pandemic has had a negative impact on our sleep as the hormones created when we are stressed or anxious counteract the hormones that help us sleep,” says James. Years of heightened stress combined with new worries around the cost of living crisis, among other things, “means our bodies are often not in the right state for sleep, making falling asleep and staying asleep harder for some.”

The key to fixing your sleep deficit is to establish a healthy sleep routine, so you can gradually start to make up the lost hours. Here’s how, according to James…

Stick to a sleeping pattern

Consistency is key, particularly when it comes to what time you wake up. A consistent sleep routine counteracts sleep deficit and lets our body get into a healthy rhythm. Laying in to try and catch up on sleep only makes sleep worse in the long term.

Learn your ‘sleep type’

Understand your sleep type and ensure your routine fits to that type as much as possible. Are you a…

• Late type (owl): you go to bed after 11pm and wake up after 8am.
• Early type (lark): you like to be in bed before 9.30pm and get up between 4-6am
• Somewhere in the middle (typical), which most of us are.