There will also be jet lag if you don’t go abroad, and the “social jet lag” will not affect the jet lag in the country. In addition to causing sleep disturbance, people do not want to sleep when they go to bed, and they can’t get up in the morning, it will also make their mood worse during the day and cognitive function decline. It may also affect the body’s metabolic function, increasing the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Social jetlag (Soical Jetlag) is a new term in the field of sleep in the past ten years. It is one of the products of modern civilization and cultural context. Why do you say that? The main reason is the lack of sleep and deprivation of modern people on weekdays, resulting in an increase in the habit of sleeping late and making up for sleep on holidays.
The “Biological clock” is the internal clock that regulates our waking times throughout the day, so that we go to sleep at the time we should sleep and wake up at the time we should wake up.
The “social clock” is the time for us to work, study, or arrange other social activities. In contrast, it can also be said to be an external clock.
Normally, our internal biological clock should coordinate with our external social clock to maintain regular living arrangements and circadian rhythms. However, in today’s busy world, the “biological clock” and the “social clock” often do not work together, and weekdays and holidays have different degrees of impact. In more serious cases, there may even be effects and problems similar to jet lag.
Work or class work and rest on weekdays
Have to sleep
Due to the busy daily life, frequent overtime or exciting nightlife and other factors, there is a tendency to sleep less at night, and often go to bed when you have to sleep, thus accumulating sleep debt (Sleep debt).
Set an alarm
The first effect of reduced sleep hours is that it will make people want to sleep more, and it is easy to stay in bed, wake up in the morning with poor spirits, lethargy and tiredness. Roenneberg, Allebrandt, Merrow and Vetter (2012) research data found that more than 80% of people set an alarm on weekdays to wake up at the “should” time.
Weekends and holidays
Reluctant to sleep
When we finally have a holiday, such as Friday and Saturday nights, we often arrange some entertainment for ourselves and want to relax, so we are reluctant to go to bed.
Sleep debt
After finally going to bed, due to the sleep debt accumulated due to sleep deprivation on weekdays at work, I usually use the rest of the holiday to make up for sleep. The time to get up on holidays tends to be later than usual, and the length of sleep is also much longer than usual, but in this way This will cause the internal biological clock to gradually delay.
A study by Roenneberg et al. in 2012 pointed out that young people have the shortest sleep hours on weekdays, and the total sleep hours on holidays are significantly more than those on weekdays, indicating that young people (mainly 20-35 years old) use holidays to make up for their sleep on weekdays. insufficient situation.
However, this phenomenon will gradually increase with age, and the difference in sleep hours between weekdays and holidays will gradually decrease. According to the survey, the difference between weekdays and holidays disappears after about 65 years of age.
What will be the impact of the difference in work and rest between weekdays and holidays?
We often use holidays to pay off the sleep debt accumulated on weekdays. Do you know what will happen to sleep if you go to bed late and wake up late for 2 consecutive days on holidays?
The study measured the concentration of melatonin (Melatonin) in saliva to explore whether delayed sleep during holidays would affect subsequent sleep. The experiment began on Tuesday for a week. Participants were asked to sleep at home according to their own bedtime for the first 3 days, and then to The New York University Sleep Laboratory conducted 4 consecutive days of sleep observation through the Multiple Sleep Test (NPSG).
Difficulty falling asleep
The study found that after the participants delayed their sleep schedule by 2 hours on Friday and Saturday, the biological clock was delayed, resulting in the symptoms of difficulty falling asleep on Sunday night, and it took more time to fall asleep, and the biological clock was delayed by an average of 31.6 minute.
Monday Blue
Because the biological clock moves backward on average, it is more difficult to get out of bed on Monday mornings, affecting subsequent sleep, mood and cognitive function. To put it simply, if you wake up 2 hours late on the 2 days of the holiday, it will take 31.6 minutes more to fall asleep on Sunday night, so your mental state is likely to be poor during the day on Monday.
In this way, the weekdays for work or school are quite different from the holidays for rest, resulting in a gap between the internal “biological clock” and the external “social clock”. When the two are out of sync, we can call it “social time difference (social jetlag)”.
Why use “time difference” to refer to these conditions? Because of this difference, it is like sleeping in two different time zones on weekdays and holidays. The sleep time on Friday flies to the west time zone, and then flies back to the original time zone on Monday morning. Just like flying to and from different time zones every week, it will have an impact similar to jet lag in the long run, resulting in disordered rhythms on weekdays and holiday nights, which in turn affects sleep and health.
People with higher BMI values have higher rates of social jet lag
In 2012, Roenneberg et al. used more than 65,000 online questionnaires to analyze the relationship between social jet lag and obesity. The results found that compared with normal weight people (BMI < 25), obese people (BMI > 25) had social jet lag. The higher the proportion, the heavier the weight, the greater the difference in sleep time between weekdays and holidays.
In a 2015 study published by Parsons and others, they found that social jet lag was associated with many markers of metabolic dysfunction and obesity in data from 815 non-shift workers. Scholars also divided the obese cases into a healthy group and a less healthy group with metabolic indicators, and found that the unhealthy obese cases had a higher social jet lag.
Social jet lag increases risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes
A 2017 study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that every hour of social jet lag increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 11%, and in the long run, it also increases emotional distress and negatively affects health.
In addition, according to the analysis report of the National Women’s Health Survey in the United States in 2016, middle-aged women between the ages of 48 and 58, even if they are not engaged in shift work, their delayed work and rest on weekends can effectively predict their increased insulin resistance ( increased risk of diabetes).
How can we fight social jet lag?
Regular sleep schedule every day, reduce the difference between weekdays and holidays sleep time, stable and consistent sleep schedule, usually go to bed earlier, Supplement sleep for no more than 2 hours on holidays, and use light at the right time to prevent the delay of the internal biological clock.
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