For adults who struggle to get the recommended amount of quality sleep, new research suggests “catching up” those lost hours on the weekends may significantly decrease the risk of heart disease.
Many people build up “sleep debt” during the week, hoping to make up for it by getting extra hours over the weekend. Sleep debt is the difference between how much quality sleep we need — at least seven hours each night — and how much we actually get, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
In a new analysis being presented Sunday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in London, cardiovascular researchers based in China found that people who got the most sleep on the weekend were 19% less likely to develop heart disease, compared with a group who slept the fewest extra hours those two days.
Previous research has shown that not getting enough sleep is associated with poor health. However, there has been little research into how getting extra sleep on the weekend affects the heart.
The researchers, from State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease, Fuwai Hospital and the National Centre for Cardiovascular Disease in Beijing, analyzed data from 90,903 subjects who were involved in the UK Biobank project.
The goal was to evaluate the relationship between heart disease and “compensated sleep,” defined as catching up on lost sleep during the weekend.
The participants, pulled from the massive U.K. database containing genetic and medical information, self-reported their sleep hours as part of the program. About 1 in 5 were considered sleep-deprived, defined as having less than seven hours of sleep per night.
For the new research, participants were divided into four groups based on how much extra, or “compensated,” sleep they were able to “catch up” on during the weekend.
The researchers followed up with the participants to see whether they developed heart disease using hospital records and cause-of-death registry information.
After an average follow-up of almost 14 years, participants who compensated with the most extra sleep on the weekend — from a little over an hour to about 16 hours — were 19% less likely to develop heart disease, compared with the group who slept the least over the weekend.
The study has several limitations. It’s an association and doesn’t prove that weekend catch-up sleep directly leads to an improvement in heart health. And other factors not studied may be responsible for the results, said Dr. Muhammad Adeel Rishi, associate professor of medicine in the department of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.
And sleeping an extra few hours on the weekend may not undo the effects of a large “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 longer on the weekend can only partly reduce sleep debt, Rishi said.
“For example, sleeping longer over the weekend may reduce fatigue and sleepiness; however, [it] may not reduce the risk of obesity in people who are [sleep] deprived,” said Rishi, who wasn’t involved with the new study.
A recent Gallup Poll found only 42% of U.S. adults get as much sleep as they need, and 57% say they would feel better if they could get more.
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