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.

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