Is catching up on sleep during the weekend healthy for you? New study says yes

Are you just another sleep-deprived corporate slave who longs for the weekend to catch up on their much-needed sleep? It's time for you to stop feeling guilty over the late start to your off day and hit that snooze button without a second thought. As per a new research study presented before the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2024, people who 'catch up' on their sleep by waking up late on the weekends can reduce their risk of heart disease by up to 20%. Let's find out what the researchers say and how they came to this conclusion.

People who don't compromise with their beauty sleep will be glad to know, that it has many other health benefits on top of the famous beauty benefits. ¡°Sufficient compensatory sleep is linked to a lower risk of heart disease,¡± according to study co-author Yanjun Song of the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease from the Fuwai Hospital, National Centre for Cardiovascular Disease, Beijing, China. He also added, ¡°The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays.¡±

As per Song, the researchers analyzed sleep data from 90,903 UK residents who were involved in the UK Biobank project and categorised nearly 22% of them - about 19,816 subjects as sleep-deprived because they slept for less than seven hours a night on average. The team followed the subjects for almost 14 years, by monitoring hospital records and cause of death registry information noting records of cardiac diseases including stroke, heart failure and even atrial fibrillation.

Finally, the researchers came to the conclusion that those who logged the most compensatory sleep were about 19% less likely to develop heart disease while among the sleep-deprived group of subjects the highest amount of 'catch-up' sleep meant a 20% lower risk of heart disease.

So, the next time your busy work week leads to sleep deprivation and you sleep in late on the weekend, quit questioning yourself whether it is healthy for you or not and catch up on those zzz's guilt-free!

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