Popular Science Time | Is it harmful to your body to catch up on sleep during the holidays? Research has found that catching up on sleep during the holidays may actually increase your body fat!

Daily Science | Is it harmful to your body to sleep in during the holidays? Research has found that sleeping in during the holidays may actually increase your body fat!

Content published by Qiangguohao

Jiangsu Science and Technology News

2023-10-14

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During the National Day holiday, many people choose to travel, but many people also choose to rest at home and catch up on sleep. After working late on weekdays, when the holiday finally comes, what you must do is catch up on sleep. If you don’t sleep until you are exhausted, this holiday will be considered a waste.

But what you may not know is that catching up on sleep during the holidays could actually mess with your metabolism. A new study suggests that your habit of sleeping in on the weekends may not be good for your figure or health.

Health Times

Is it harmful to your health to sleep too much during holidays?

A study published in the international academic journal Current Biology recently found that catching up on sleep during the holidays does not reduce the harm caused by insufficient sleep during work, and may even make the situation worse.

The researchers randomly divided 36 healthy volunteers (aged 18-39) into three groups. Each group was allowed to sleep for nine hours in the first three days to reduce the impact of sleep before the experiment on the experimental data.

Group 1: slept 9 hours a night for 10 days;

The second group: slept 5 hours a day for 10 days, that is, stayed up late on weekdays and holidays;

Group 3: Sleep 5 hours a night from Monday to Friday, and get enough sleep on Saturday and Sunday (no time limit). Simulate staying up late on weekdays and make up for sleep on holidays.

The study found that people in the second and third groups who lacked sleep ate more at dinner and gained weight, and men gained much more weight than women.

What was surprising was what happened to the group that slept in on the weekends. The weekend catch-up sleepers had worse insulin sensitivity in their muscles and livers, while those who had never gotten enough sleep (the second group) did not have this phenomenon. So catching up on sleep on the weekends does not return our bodies to a normal state, and the effects of lack of sleep on metabolism are more long-term and take longer to make up for.

As everyone expected, the irregular sleep behavior of "catching up on sleep during the holidays" disrupts the circadian rhythm and makes melatonin lose its control. After the third group of volunteers caught up on sleep on the weekend, the changes in melatonin levels and the start and end times of sleep lost consistency. The time difference was nearly 1 hour longer than the second group and nearly 2 hours longer than the first group!

"Catching up on sleep on the weekends doesn't have a 'repair' effect," said Dr. Vsevolod Polotsky, director of sleep research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Studies show that even if you sleep long enough on the weekends, if you don't get enough sleep afterwards, you'll still eat a lot and continue to gain weight."

Therefore, people who often make up for sleep during holidays may not be "swollen from oversleeping" but may actually be "fat from eating too much".

Please keep this scientific guide to getting enough sleep!

Sun Wei, deputy chief physician of the Sleep Medicine Center of Peking University Sixth Hospital, said in an interview with CCTV News that staying up late for a long time will change the body's biological clock. If you don't make up for your sleep properly, it will affect your sleep even more. In fact, improper sleep can further aggravate the disorder of the biological clock and lead to diseases of the digestive system, endocrine system, nervous system, etc. You can't expect to improve your sleep deprivation by making up for your sleep. Remember these two points when making up for your sleep scientifically: ②

1. Go to bed early or get up late, and don’t sleep for more than 1 hour

If you feel sleepy at night and fall asleep easily, you can go to bed earlier. If you can't fall asleep earlier, don't go to bed earlier. You can get up later instead. Whether you go to bed early or get up late, the extra sleep time should not be too long, half an hour to an hour is appropriate.

2. Take a nap before 2 p.m. and don’t take more than 30 minutes

Take a nap during the day, but not too long, 30 minutes is enough. Also, don’t take a nap too late, it is recommended to take a nap before 2 pm.

3. Maintain a regular sleep schedule and avoid staying up late to catch up on sleep

Leave more time for your sleep and try to avoid staying up late. Because what we stay up late is not the night, but our youth and health.

Improve your sleep quality, learn 6 methods

How can we have a good sleep quality? Many people are often troubled by difficulty falling asleep, insomnia, and recurring dreams. Chen Chen, chief physician of the Department of Neurology at Shanxi Cardiovascular Hospital, published an article in the People's Daily Health Account in 2022 introducing 6 good ways to improve sleep quality and help sleep. ③

1. Learn to create melatonin fluctuations

To create a bedroom suitable for sleeping, the environment should be quiet and dark, with a room temperature of about 20℃, and blackout curtains must be used. Excessive light exposure will lead to a decrease in the secretion of melatonin, which may cause your sleep quality to decline. The first thing to do when you wake up in the morning is to open the curtains to create a fluctuation of melatonin, so that the body knows that it is daytime and we cannot sleep in the light. At night, once the curtains are closed, we can sleep well again when it is dark.

2. Don’t eat dinner too late

Many people like to eat midnight snacks, which is not good. Eating too late will increase our blood sugar, which will make us more easily excited and make it difficult for us to fall asleep. If we are really hungry before going to bed, we should not eat high-sugar and high-carb foods, but drink a glass of hot milk.

3. Do some exercise every day

Exercise is a good habit, especially appropriate exercise, which is very good for our cardiovascular and cerebrovascular system and for controlling the "three highs". But remember, don't exercise before going to bed, try to exercise three hours before going to bed. Otherwise, your whole body will be in a state of excitement and it will be difficult to fall asleep.

4. Do something relaxing before bed

Relaxation is not about playing games or browsing the phone. We can take a hot bath, read a book, etc. A friend of mine improved his sleep by putting his phone in the living room at 9 o'clock and turning it to silent mode. He never looked at his phone or dealt with anything. After a period of conditioning, not only did his sleep improve, but his anxiety and depression also improved significantly!

5. Maintain your daily biological clock

A fixed schedule is very important. We should go to bed at a fixed time every day, for example, 10 o'clock every night, and our body will slowly adapt to this time. Remember to keep this rhythm all the time, including on weekends. Don't sleep in on weekends and get up early to go to work on weekdays. If your biological clock is disrupted, insomnia will be difficult to cure. Even if we occasionally have to work overtime, we must do this. No matter how late we go to bed, we still get up at a fixed time, so that our biological clock is stable.

6. If you can’t sleep, try meditation

If you really can't fall asleep while lying down, you can try meditation, which is a method commonly used by psychologists. Get rid of those messy thoughts, imagine yourself basking in the sun on the beach, enjoying the beautiful scenery on the top of the mountain, or even counting sheep one by one.

Source: Health Times

Editors: Ma Xiaojuan and Xia Jun

This article is published by Qiangguohao.