For sleep medicine, deprivation is defined by the duration of sleep, which is the total amount of time a person spends asleep. In reality, waking up well rested does not just depend on how many hours you can sleep continuously, but is influenced by many other factors.
Consequently, terms such as:
- Lack of sleep
- Insufficient sleep.
For example, a person who sleeps a total of eight hours, but with many nocturnal awakenings, which fragment their sleep, may not get enough sleep, even though the length of the night's rest theoretically corresponds to the recommended amount.
Regardless of this premise, in everyday conversations, there can be considerable overlap of the terms sleep deprivation and sleep deprivation, often used interchangeably; both can therefore be referred to a bad rest in general and not only to the total duration of sleep.
