People who “catch up” on missed sleep at the weekend may have up to a 20% lower risk of heart disease compared with those who do not, according to a study.
The findings, presented at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, looked at data from 90,903 adults taking part in the UK Biobank project, a database that holds medical and lifestyle records of 500,000 people in the UK.
Of these, 19,816 met the criteria for being sleep-deprived, and over a follow-up period of 14 years the researchers found that the people who had the most extra sleep during the weekends were 19% less likely to develop heart disease than those who had the least amount of sleep at the weekends.
Sleep deprivation in the study has been defined as those who self-reported having had less than seven hours of sleep per night.
Those who got extra sleep at weekends ranged from an additional 1.28 hours to 16.06 hours, and those with the least sleep were losing 16.05 hours to 0.26 hours over the weekend.
The study also looked at a sub-group of people with daily sleep deprivation and found that those who had the most compensatory sleep at the weekend had a 20% lower risk of developing heart disease than those with the least.
Although the rest of the participants included in the study may have experienced inadequate sleep, on average their daily hours of sleep did not meet the criteria for being sleep deprived.
Prof Yanjun Song, the study’s author, of China’s National Centre for Cardiovascular Disease in Beijing, said: “Sufficient compensatory sleep is linked to a lower risk of heart disease. The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays.”
Zechen Liu, a co-author of the study, said: “Our results show that for the significant proportion of the population in modern society that suffers from sleep deprivation, those who have the most ‘catch-up’ sleep at weekends have significantly lower rates of heart disease than those with the least.”
Prof James Leiper, an associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, who was not involved in the study, said: “Lots of us don’t get enough sleep due to work or family commitments, and while a weekend lie-in is no replacement for a regular good night’s rest, this large study suggests that it might help reduce risk of heart disease.
“We know that lack of sleep can affect our overall wellbeing, and this research is an important reminder of how important it is to try to get at least seven hours’ sleep every night. We look forward to future studies to better understand how sleep patterns can impact the heart and how we can adapt modern lifestyles to help improve our health.”
Previous studies looking at sleep have suggested that people who experienced less than four hours of sleep for two consecutive nights felt more than four years older, with some claiming that the lack of sleep made them feel decades older.
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The researchers asked 429 people aged 18 to 70 questions about how old they felt and on how many nights, if any, they had slept badly in the past month. Their sleepiness was also rated according to a standard scale used in psychology research.
For each day of poor sleep the volunteers felt on average three months older, the scientists found, while those who reported no bad nights in the preceding month felt on average nearly six years younger than their true age.
By contrast, participants in the study who stayed in bed for nine hours claimed on average to feel three months younger than their actual age.
Commenting on the study, Prof Christopher Depner, of the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the research, pointed out that it was not peer-reviewed and he remained sceptical about its findings.