But oversleeping has been linked to a host of medical problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and increased risk of death.
Sleeping too much, whether during the day, at night or both, can be a sign of an underlying sleep disorder. Oversleeping can have negative effects on your health and is linked to risks of many illnesses and diseases.
Regularly getting too little sleep is linked to a number of chronic diseases, not to mention irritability and sluggishness during the day. But did you know that sleeping too much could also be problematic? Oversleeping is associated with many health problems, including: Type 2 diabetes.
And while the occasional long sleep is generally nothing to worry about, oversleeping several days a week could be a sign that something more serious is going on.
Why Oversleeping Is Risky. “While consistently getting less than the recommended amount of sleep has been associated with multiple adverse health outcomes, sleeping more than nine hours per night regularly may also be detrimental,” Makekau says. She says oversleeping can lead to: Increased fatigue and low energy.
Research bears out the connection between too much sleep and too little energy. It appears that any significant deviation from normal sleep patterns can upset the body's rhythms and increase daytime fatigue.
Idiopathic Hypersomnia
This sleep disorder is characterized by difficulty waking. View Source , excessive sleepiness, and the inability to feel rested after sleeping at night or napping during the day. With this disorder, you may sleep as much as 14 to 18 hours a day.
Possible underlying reasons include depression and anxiety. Depression is linked to dysania, a nonmedical term for when a person feels the need to stay in bed without sleeping. A wide range of physical conditions can also lead to fatigue, making it hard to get up. They include ME/CFS and long COVID.
Mental states – anxiety can keep a person awake at night, which makes them prone to sleepiness during the day. Depression saps energy. Medications – such as alcohol, caffeinated drinks, tranquillisers, sleeping pills and antihistamines can disrupt sleeping patterns.
The most common cause of falling asleep randomly during the day is not getting enough good quality sleep. But a range of medical conditions, environmental factors, lifestyle factors, and medications can also be responsible.
Hypersomnia is a condition in which people have excessive daytime sleepiness. This means they feel tired during the day. Hypersomnia can also include situations in which a person needs to sleep a lot.
If you or a loved one feel sleepy or fatigued, despite having 7-8 hours of sleep, it could indicate poor sleep quality or be a sign of an underlying sleep disorder. If you have questions or concerns about your sleep health, please speak with your primary care provider.
Laying on your back for long periods can cause the muscles that support the normal curvature of your back to become fatigued. When you wake up with muscle fatigue, you will experience tight muscles and back pain.
"Simply put, hair is at its most vulnerable when wet. Sleeping with wet hair can lead to a host of problems for the scalp: unwanted bacteria, fungal infections, skin irritation, itchiness, dryness, redness, and dandruff," says hairstylist Miko Branch, co-founder of hair care brand Miss Jessie's.
Depending on the group size, monkeys can sleep all in the same tree or in very large groups they can use several big trees or palms to sleep. Most diurnal species don't make any noise or movement overnight.
Oversleeping is one of the main reasons that you are not losing weight anymore. It can in fact also cause weight gain. Oversleeping is categorized as sleeping for more than nine hours a night. However, if you sleep less than seven hours a night, it might be harmful to your body too.
While sleeping in for a morning or two may help ease symptoms like fatigue or daytime sleepiness, this is often not enough to adequately recover from sleep debt. Research has shown that it can take up to four days to recover from one hour of lost sleep and up to nine days to completely eliminate sleep debt.
Editor's note: Kleine-Levin Syndrome mostly affects teen boys, causing them to sleep up to 20 hours a day during episodes that can last weeks. It's rare, possibly affecting one person in a million, with a higher incidence among Jewish people.
After being in the hospital for 13 days Wyatt made a complete recovery after he got through with treatment using drugs that are usually used in the management of seizures. Wyatt Shaw still holds the record for longest sleep which is 11 days.
Other possible causes of oversleeping include the use of certain substances, such as alcohol and some prescription medications. Other medical conditions, including depression, can cause people to oversleep. And then there are people who simply enjoy sleeping for long periods of time.
You sleep more deeply when you are sleep deprived, so you do not need to “pay back” hour for hour the lost sleep. However, if you have not had enough sleep for many days, it might take several nights of good-quality sleep to recover.