Catching up on lost sleep on the weekends benefits our hearts

“Adequate compensatory sleep is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease,” said study co-author Yanjun Sun of the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases in Beijing, China. “This association is even stronger among people who typically sleep poorly during the week.”

It is known that people suffering from sleep deprivation,they sleep more“Weekends to mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation. However, there is not enough research on whether this compensatory sleep helps heart health.

The authors used data from 90,903 subjects participating in the UK Biobank project to assess the relationship between compensated sleep on weekends and cardiovascular disease. Sleep data were recorded using accelerometers and grouped into quartiles (divided into four roughly equal groups from the most compensated sleep to the least). Q1 was the least compensated, while Q4 had the most compensated sleep.

Participants were told whether they had been sleep deprived or not, and those who reported sleep were less than 7 hours a day They considered themselves sleep deprived. A total of 19,816 (21.8%) participants were considered sleep deprived.

The remaining cohort members may have experienced insufficient sleep from time to time, but on average their daily hours of sleep did not meet the criteria for sleep deprivation; the authors acknowledge that this is a limitation of their data.

Heart risks

Hospital admission records and cause of death information were used to diagnose various heart diseases, including coronary artery disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and stroke.

Over a mean follow-up period of almost 14 years, participants in the most compensatory sleep group (Q4) were 19% less likely to develop cardiovascular disease than participants in the Q1 group.

In a subgroup of patients with daily sleep deprivation, those with more compensatory sleep had a 20% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease than those with less.

The analysis revealed no differences between men and women.

“Our results show that in a significant proportion of modern society suffering from sleep deprivation, those who sleep more on weekends have significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease than those who sleep less.” Zechen Liualso from the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases in Beijing.