Researchers proposed it takes 4 days of quality sleep to recover from just 1 hour of sleep debt.
Why it's hard to catch up on sleepPsychiatrist and sleep medicine expert, Dr. Alex Dimitriu, is of the mindset that you can catch up on sleep, but only if you haven't let your sleep debt grow too great.
By definition, one hour of sleep lost equals one hour of sleep debt.
"If the sleep debt is greater, the time to recover becomes markedly longer, and complete recovery may not be possible, so it's important to not let sleep debt go too far," Dimitriu, founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, told Insider.
How to pay back sleep debtPaying back sleep debt is like paying back credit card debt: Try to pay all, or as much, of the total balance so that the debt doesn't grow too large.