Sleeping Too Much
- 23 minutes ago
- 5 min read
People assume more sleep equals more restoration. The biological evidence suggests otherwise, because extended sleep creates specific physiological consequences that differ significantly from genuine recovery. Understanding these effects requires examining what sleep actually does at the system level. Human physiology operates on alternating charge and release. Waking hours create charge through metabolic activity, postural tension, cognitive load, sensory input. Sleep provides release through reduced demand, lowered body temperature, decreased cortisol, activated repair processes. This alternation maintains what researchers call allostatic balance, where your system needs both states in specific proportions. Too much charge without adequate release leads to burnout, and too much release without sufficient charge leads to collapse of bioelectrical tone. Oversleeping traps the body in prolonged release, where the nervous system interprets this as environmental signal: low demand, reduced threat, minimal need for alertness. It responds by downregulating arousal systems, which manifests as the fog people experience after sleeping too long. When sleep extends beyond your body’s optimal duration, several specific processes occur.