Are you feeling a bit groggy this morning? Do you wish you could just hit off your alarm, roll over and snooze for another hour or two? You could be suffering from ‘social jet lag.’ Yes, it’s a real thing. Seriously.
The Irish Daily Mail reports that scientists have discovered that sleeping in over the weekend can actually leave us too tired for working week by the time Monday rolls around, and that most of us don’t manage to shake this sleep-deprived feeling until Wednesday. (Yep, it sounds about right, doesn’t it?).
So what sort of impact is this social jetlag having on us then? Well it can affect our memory and our reaction time, which explains why we always feel so sluggish on a Monday morning.
The study, which was carried out at Rush University in Chicago also discovered that repeated changes to sleep patterns can make us fatter and more likely to smoke and rely on caffeine to get us through our day.
According to researchers, a shift of just two hours in your usual sleeping pattern can leave you worse off a few days later.
So if you’re used to getting up early during the week, but treat yourself to an extra two hours in bed at the weekend, you’re far more likely to suffer when it comes to getting up early on Monday morning.
Hmm…well, we guess we’ll just have to start getting up at 11am during the week too. To save our memory and improve our reaction time like…eh…yeah…
