NBC News
For adults struggling to get the recommended hours of sleep, new research suggests that recover the time lost Sleeping more on weekends can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease.
Many people accumulate a sleep debt during the week, hoping to make up for it with overtime on the weekend. sleep debt It’s the difference between the amount of quality sleep we need (at least seven hours each night) and how much we actually get, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Chinese cardiovascular researchers have found that people who sleep more on the weekend are 19% less likely to suffer from heart disease, compared with the group that slept fewer hours on those two days, according to a new analysis presented Sunday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in the United Kingdom.
Previous research has shown that not getting enough sleep is associated with poor health. However, little has been done to understand how sleeping more on the weekend affects the heart.
The researchers, from the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, Fuwai Hospital and the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases in Beijing, analyzed data from 90,903 people who participated in the UK Biobank project.
The objective was to evaluate the relationship between heart disease and sleep. compensateddefined as making up for lost sleep at the weekend. Participants, drawn from the huge UK database of genetic and medical data, reported their hours of sleep as part of the programme. Nearly one in five considered themselves sleep deprived, meaning they slept less than seven hours a night.
For the new research, participants were divided into four groups based on the amount of extra sleep, or compensatedthat they could recover over the weekend.
The researchers followed the participants to find out whether they developed heart disease, using hospital records and data from the cause of death registry.
After an average follow-up of nearly 14 years, participants who compensated with more weekend sleep — from just over an hour to about 16 hours — were 19 percent less likely to develop heart disease.
The study has several limitations. It’s an association study and doesn’t prove that weekend sleep recovery directly leads to improved heart health. And other, unstudied factors could be responsible for the results, said Dr. Muhammad Adeel Rishi, a professor of medicine in the Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.
Plus, sleeping a few extra hours on the weekend may not undo the effects of a big sleep debt accumulated over the week, experts say. A 2019 study found a link between catch-up sleep behavior and increased snacking and weight gain.
Sleeping more on the weekend may only partially reduce sleep deprivation, Rishi added. “For example, it may reduce fatigue and sleepiness, but not the risk of obesity in sleep-deprived people,” said the doctor, who was not involved in the new study.
Only 42 percent of American adults get the sleep they need to stay healthy, and 57 percent said they would feel better if they could get more sleep, according to a recent Gallup poll.
