Extra Weekend Sleep Linked to Better Heart Health
People who get more sleep on the weekend to catch up on sleep they've lost during the week could be decreasing their risk of heart problems.
That's according to a new study by researchers in China.
If you have busy weekdays — perhaps with late nights and early alarms — you may enjoy staying under the blankets for a bit longer on your days off.
The research team wanted to find out whether this "catch-up sleep" has an effect on heart health.
They looked at sleep data from almost 91,000 people in the UK, putting participants into four groups based on how much sleep they caught up on during their weekends.
People's sleep was measured using special watches, and their health was tracked for an average of 14 years.
The study found that people who got the most catch-up sleep were 19% less likely to develop cardiovascular conditions compared to those who got the least catch-up sleep.
Some got as much as 16 hours of catch-up sleep over the weekend.
The researchers also found that people who got less than seven hours of sleep per night were most likely to benefit from weekend catch-up sleep.
These people were 20% less likely to develop cardiovascular conditions.
However, while this study — which has not been peer reviewed — found that catching up on sleep may be good for us, experts say that we should be trying to get at least seven hours of sleep every night of the week.
As James Leiper from the British Heart Foundation told The Guardian, weekend catch-up sleep is "no replacement for a regular good night's rest."
