‘Catching Up On Sleep’ Isn’t a Thing and Your Circadian Clock Will Punish You If You Try It

By Doug Barry | September 12, 2012 | 3:55am

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Researchers have some fun new info to share with us about the circadian cuckoo clock within each of us that’s just waiting to blast our hearts out of our chests if we mess with its timing too much — we can’t fool the circadian clock because the circadian clock is wise to all of our various subterfuges. For instance, the omniscient circadian clock knows when we try to trick it by lounging around the house on Saturday with a mixing bowl of Apple Jacks cradled in our laps, ostensibly trying to “catch up on sleep.” “Fools!” the circadian clock would say if it were personified as a wizard with a bristly white beard and a suspiciously attentive cat named Sarsparilla. “No one can cheat the circadian clock!”

All the latest sleep gossip shows that, far from making up for the sleep deficits we incur each week by waiting for Twitter to update into the wee small hours of the morning, sleeping in on the weekends simply disrupts the sleep cycle our bodies have adapted to, making us more tired when the weekly grind kicks into gear again Monday morning. The circadian cycle lasts 24-hours, so sleeping in extra long on the weekends will confuse the body, prompting it to go, “Wait, what the FUCK?” when it has to readjust to its weekday routine. Far better, say sleepsperts like Dr Gregory Carter at the University of Texas Southwestern to simply go to bed earlier on the weekends and miss out on all the fun the world will be having behind your back. Enjoy your perfectly calibrated circadian clock, loser.