Inadequate sleep has long been proven as a trigger and cause for mental and physical illnesses and even leading to an early death. Now, there is hope in the form of a new research finding from Stockholm University’s Stress Research Institute that compensating for missed sleep on the weekends really does work and can even lengthen your life.
Previous studies have found a U?shaped relationship between mortality and (weekday) sleep duration. The latest study, published last week in the Journal of Sleep Research, address the association of both weekday and weekend sleep duration with overall mortality. A cohort of 43,880 subjects was followed for 13 years through record?linkages.
Between 1997 and 2010, a total of 3,234 died. That’s a rate of about six deaths per 1,000 people per year. By 2010, the world mortality rate was about eight in 1,000. The adults in the study were grouped by sleep duration. Short sleepers slept for less than five hours per night, medium sleepers about seven hours and long sleepers for nine or more hours per night. The groups were again divided and paired by weekday and weekend sleep habits.
Short sleepers under age 65 who slept for an average of five hours or fewer during the week and then slept for at least eight hours on the weekend did not have an increased risk of death compared to the adults who slept six to seven hours per night, researchers found. But without making up for lost sleep during the week, those only getting five hours of fewer during the week did not live as long as people who consistently slept seven hours each night. Weekend snoozers, the data showed, live just as long as those who slept enough during the week.
“The results imply that short (weekday) sleep is not a risk factor for mortality if it is combined with a medium or long weekend sleep,” the researchers wrote in the study. “This suggests that short weekday sleep may be compensated for during the weekend, and that this has implications for mortality.” The researchers also found that people who slept for eight hours or more every day had a 25% higher mortality rate compared to those who managed six or seven hours a night.
But the data does not show that short or long sleep is somehow responsible for higher mortality, lead author Torbjorn Akerstedt told the Washington Post. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society recommends adults ages 18 to 60 sleep about seven hours per night. “Sleeping less than seven hours per night on a regular basis is associated with adverse health outcomes,” the academy wrote in a consensus statement.
Self-reporting may be considered a limitation of the study, but researchers note it’s a practical way to accumulate large-scale data. They did account for other factors influencing sleep, such as alcohol and coffee consumption, smoking habits, shift work and more. The take home point is that possibly, long weekend sleep may compensate for short weekday sleep.
