Weekend catch-up sleep may be good for your heart
Using the weekend to make up for the sleep you missed during the week could help reduce your risk of developing heart disease, researchers say.
A team from the National Centre for Cardiovascular Disease in Beijing looked at sleep data for nearly 91,000 people. They used hospitalization records and death registry information to diagnose cardiac diseases such as ischemic heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation and stroke.
They found that, after a median follow-up of 14 years, study participants who got the most “compensatory sleep” on weekends – from 1.3 to 16 hours – were 19% less likely to develop heart disease. And among a subgroup of participants who said they regularly slept less than seven hours each weeknight, those who got the most make-up sleep on weekends had a 20% lower risk of developing heart disease than those with the least.
Experts recommend that adults get seven or more hours of sleep each night.
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