Did you sleep little all week? This is the number of hours of sleep you should catch up on over the weekend
A new study has found that catching up on sleep on weekends is beneficial for the body. Experts suggest that an extra 1 hour and 27 minutes of sleep is the ideal amount to reduce health risks.
The weekend has arrived, you have honorably turned off the alarm clock and continued to sleep until you woke up naturally, but when you finally woke up, did the feeling of freshness quickly turn into feelings of guilt over inefficiency and waste? If so, put your mind at ease: a new study has found that catching up on sleep on weekends is beneficial for the body.
Although experts have for years warned of the risks associated with sleeping late and claimed that catching up on sleep on the weekend could disrupt the body's internal clock and cause health problems, the new study casts doubt on these claims, according to a report in The Guardian. The study, led by Dr. Na-eun Lee from Korea University in Seoul, was presented in Munich at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
The main and encouraging finding is that as long as you don't overdo it, catching up on sleep on weekends is a good thing. The ideal reference point — an extra 1 hour and 27 minutes in bed — was linked to the greatest reduction in the risk of high blood pressure.
"Adding hours of sleep on the weekends can give the body a chance to recover and reduce some of the stress that has accumulated throughout the week," Lee said. "People shouldn't feel like they are lazy or have feelings of guilt because they sleep a little more on the weekend. If they didn't manage to get enough sleep during the week, a little extra sleep on the weekend is probably the body's way of recovering from sleep deprivation," she explained.
Sleep is not just a break for the brain, it helps regulate heart rate. Usually, when we sleep, blood pressure and heart rate drop, providing the heart with a necessary respite. The study monitored the sleep patterns of 40,000 people in South Korea for seven years. Catching up on sleep on weekends was defined as the difference between sleep duration on weekends and sleep duration on weekdays. According to the researchers, this extra sleep is associated with a 6% reduction in the chances of suffering from hypertension.
More than 1.3 billion people worldwide suffer from high blood pressure, which increases the chance of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, and premature death. However, it is important to remember that sleeping late on weekends alone will not prevent high blood pressure, and other preventive factors include physical activity, a healthy weight, and diet. Nevertheless, the study found that an extra 1 hour and 27 minutes of sleep reduces the chance of high blood pressure by 9%.
While the findings are encouraging, like everything else in life, it is all a matter of dosage. Lee warned that too much sleep can be harmful. For example, people who catch up on more than four hours of extra sleep during the weekend are at a higher risk of suffering from high blood pressure.
"I think that moderate sleep to catch up on hours of sleep on the weekend may have a protective effect, because for people who suffer from sleep deprivation during the week, the benefit of catching up on the missing hours of sleep may outweigh the potential damage resulting from an irregular sleep routine," Lee said. "However, when catching up on sleep on weekends becomes excessive, the degree of sleep irregularity and the disruption of the biological clock may increase, thereby offsetting this benefit."
Therefore, it is important to continue to maintain a regular sleep system, and remember that some catching up on hours of sleep is positive "and you shouldn't feel bad about it." But with all due respect to the weekends, and the opportunity they provide to catch up on hours of sleep, it is important to remember that the recommended amount of sleep for adults over the age of 18 is at least seven hours a night.
