Zzzzzzzz.......

Over the last two weeks I've been so busy with school, work and graduation activities that I find it hard to have enough time for everything during the course of the day.  In order to keep up with my obligations, I've had to give up some precious sleep time.  I have always been one of those people that needed to sleep my full 8 hours, I typically don't stay up late (past 11) and I prefer to get up around 6 or 7 and get the day started.  Lately, I've been up past midnight, getting up an hour earlier and going from one place to the other with little lag time in between.  I know that my kids have been able to tell that lack of sleep makes for a cranky Mama.  I was curious about what sleep really does for us and how lack of sleep effects people.  Here's what I found out:

Myths and Facts about Sleep
Myth 1: Getting just one hour less sleep per night won’t affect your daytime functioning. You may not be noticeably sleepy during the day, but losing even one hour of sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly. It also compromises your cardiovascular health, energy balance, and ability to fight infections.
Myth 2: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules. Most people can reset their biological clock, but only by appropriately timed cues—and even then, by one–two hours per day at best. Consequently, it can take more than a week to adjust after traveling across several time zones or switching to the night shift.
Myth 3: Extra sleep at night can cure you of problems with excessive daytime fatigue. The quantity of sleep you get is important, sure, but it's the quality of your sleep that you really have to pay attention to. Some people sleep eight or nine hours a night but don’t feel well rested when they wake up because the quality of their sleep is poor.
Myth 4: You can make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. Although this sleeping pattern will help relieve part of a sleep debt, it will not completely make up for the lack of sleep. Furthermore, sleeping later on the weekends can affect your sleep-wake cycle so that it is much harder to go to sleep at the right time on Sunday nights and get up early on Monday mornings.  http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleeping.htm

I really thought that sleeping late on the weekends was helping me, but according to this information, it's not.  On the days that I sleep late, I tend to feel more tired late in the afternoon and almost want to take a nap.  So...since it's late now, past my bedtime as a matter of fact, I'm going to bed to hopefully get a QUALITY 7 hours in before tomorrow morning. ;) Night, night!