People who sleep in on weekends can lower their risk of heart disease, finds a Chinese study presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual meeting. Sleep deprivation has been linked to heightened risks of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart attack and stroke.
To find out if sleeping in on days off can mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation, researchers used data from 90,903 participants in the UK Biobank project. Sleep data was recorded using accelerometers and they were divided into four groups ranging from most compensated sleep to least. About 22 per cent of the participants were sleep deprived, defined as regularly getting less than seven hours of sleep per night.
Incidence of cardiac diseases such as ischaemic heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke and death were assessed using hospitalisation records and death registry. During an average follow-up of 14 years, those who got the most compensatory sleep on weekends were 19 per cent less likely to develop heart disease. The association was even more pronounced for those who were regularly sleep deprived on weekdays, but made up for it on weekends.
“Sufficient compensatory sleep is linked to a lower risk of heart disease,” the study concluded.