Sleeping in on the weekends may reduce your risk of heart disease by 20%! Just get enough sleep →

Sleeping in on the weekends may reduce your risk of heart disease by 20%! Just get enough sleep →

Compiled by: Gong Zixin

Can you really make up for all the late nights you stay up late during the week on weekends? Does it affect your heart health?

Recently, the official website of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) announced a new study conducted by Chinese scientists in 2024: People who "catch up on sleep" by sleeping in on weekends may reduce their risk of heart disease by 20%.

"Adequate compensatory sleep is associated with a lower risk of heart disease," said researchers from the National Center for Cardiovascular Disease, Fuwai Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. "This association was more pronounced in people who were frequently sleep deprived on weekdays."

It’s well known that sleep-deprived people will sleep in on their days off to mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation. However, research is lacking on whether this compensatory sleep is beneficial for heart health.

The researchers used data from 90,903 subjects in the UK Biobank project. To assess the relationship between compensatory sleep on weekends and heart disease, sleep data were recorded using an accelerometer and grouped into quartiles (four roughly equal groups based on the most to least compensatory sleep): Group 1 had the least compensatory sleep, ranging from -16.05 hours to -0.26 hours (i.e. less sleep); Group 2 had -0.26 to +0.45 hours; Group 3 had +0.45 to +1.28 hours, and Group 4 had the most compensatory sleep (1.28 to 16.06 hours).

Insufficient sleep was self-reported by the participants, and those who slept less than 7 hours per night were defined as insufficient sleep, with a total of 19,816 (21.8%) participants having insufficient sleep. The remaining study subjects may occasionally be insufficiently sleepy, but on average, their daily sleep duration did not meet the criteria for insufficient sleep.

The researchers also collected information from participants' hospitalization records and cause-of-death registries for various heart disease diagnoses, including ischemic heart disease (IHD), heart failure (HF), atrial fibrillation (AF), and stroke.

After a median follow-up of nearly 14 years, participants who had the most compensatory sleep were 19% less likely to develop heart disease than those who had the least compensatory sleep. In the subgroup with insufficient daily sleep, participants who had the most compensatory sleep had a 20% lower risk of heart disease than those who had the least compensatory sleep.

The study analysis showed no differences between men and women.

"Our results suggest that for a large proportion of the modern population who suffer from sleep deprivation, those who catch up the most sleep on weekends have significantly lower odds of heart disease than those who catch up the least," the researchers noted.

The cover image and images within this article are from the copyright gallery (or copyright holder). Any reproduction or use may lead to copyright disputes.

<<:  Researching new materials with AI is fast

>>:  It is called "soft gold in water" and China now produces it the largest amount in the world!

Recommend

There are 100 ways to gain followers on WeChat. Which ones have you learned?

People often ask me how to add people. Here is a ...

Practical case analysis: How to deeply understand user growth

The concept of User Growth (UG) originated from t...

2018 WeChat Open Class, what key points should marketers pay attention to?

On January 15, 2018, Zhang Xiaolong 's speech...

Alpha Egg AI Dictionary Pen X10: A personal tutor in a pencil case

In today's internationalized era, English pro...

Cloud gaming has arrived as expected, is the smart TV industry really ready?

It has been 11 years since the concept of cloud g...

Four ways to attract traffic to Zhihu in 2019!

Now more and more people trust Zhihu and not Baid...

Aiti Tribe Stories (31): How to become a qualified network engineer?

[51CTO.com original article] Perhaps many people ...

How is programming different in school than in real life?

[[151621]] When you first join a company, you wil...