Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep On the Weekends? Here ’s What Experts Think

Sleep experts have long preached the importance of a sleep routine. Going to bed and rising at roughly the same time every day helps to regulate circadian rhythms and improve overall sleep quality and quantity. But a new study published in the Journal of Sleep Research, offers a surprising asterisk to that advice: If you don’t get enough sleep during the week, it says, sleeping in on the weekends may cancel out at least some of the associated health risks. The findings are based on survey responses from more than 38,000 Swedish adults who answered questions about their lifestyle habits, medical histories and average weekday and weekend sleep durations. The researchers used this data to draw conclusions about how total sleep, as well as workday versus day-off sleep, relates to mortality. The researchers analyzed 13 years of data and found that people who slept for five hours or less each night had a 65% higher risk of premature death, compared to those who consistently slept for six or seven hours per night. (This association largely disappeared among adults older than 65, who tend to keep consistent sleep schedules, and who the researchers posit may need less rest overall.) But when the researchers looked at people who made up for scant weeknight sleep with longer weekend snoozes, they observed something interesting: These people did not seem to have a higher mortality risk than the group that slept about seven hours a night. “This suggests that short weekday sl...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthytime onetime sleep Source Type: news