World Sleep Day 2024: Sleeping extra during the weekend might be good for your heart according to study

Now you don't need to feel guilty for oversleeping during the weekend as a new study conducted by Nanjing Medical University in China has concluded that a person sleeping extra hours of sleep over the weekends has a healthier heart.

The study analysed data on 3400 US adults, compiled from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES for short, the researchers made some astonishing findings on weekend catch-up sleep.

Sleeping an hour longer on weekends better for heart health

The NHANES aimed to gather data on participants’ sleeping hours during both weekends and weekdays, as well as if they had any or all of the following risk factors: heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes mellitus. Analysis of the data from this survey showed that adults aged 20 or older who slept an hour longer on weekends than on weekdays had lower rates of stroke, coronary artery disease, and angina.

In addition, adults who slept less than six hours on weekdays, and got two or more extra hours of sleep on the weekend, had the most significant reduction in this risk. Perhaps paradoxically though, there didn’t seem to be any association between weekend catch-up sleep in adults who slept for more than six hours on weekdays.

This is not the first study that connects sleeping hours to the risk of cardiovascular disease. Earlier studies by both Nanjing researchers and researchers at other institutions have shown that there is a significant correlation between heart disease risk, diabetes mellitus, obesity, high blood pressure, and even depression to sleeping habits.

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