Lower Your Heart Disease Risk by Catching Up on Sleep
Sleep deprivation has been associated with a greater risk of heart disease. Fortunately, if you fail to get enough sleep during the week, playing catchup on the weekend may help to lower your cardiac risk. In a recent study, scientists analyzed data on 90,903 people who wore devices that tracked their sleep. More than a fifth of the participants were categorized as sleep deprived, averaging less than seven hours of sleep per night. During an average follow-up period of 14 years, the participants who got 1.3 to 16 hours of catch-up, or “compensatory,” sleep on weekends had a 19% lower risk of developing heart disease, compared with individuals who slept less on weekends than during the week, the study found. “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 on weekends have significantly lower rates of heart disease than those with the least,” one of the study authors said in a press release (European Society of Cardiology Congress, August 2024).
