(ANSA) – ROME, AUGUST 29 – Sleeping in late on weekends to make up for sleep lost in previous days could help reduce the risk of heart disease by a fifth, according to a study published at the European Society of Cardiology Congress underway in London.
“Adequate compensatory sleep is linked to a lower risk of heart disease,” said study co-author Yanjun Song of the State Key Laboratory of Infectious Disease, Fuwai Hospital, National Center for Cardiovascular Disease, in Beijing. “The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly get inadequate sleep on weekdays.”
The authors used data from 90,903 people involved in the UK Biobank project to assess the relationship between weekend sleep recovery and heart disease: sleep data were recorded with smartwatches or similar devices and people were divided into four roughly equal groups based on the amount of sleep they recovered over the weekend. Group 1 (22,475 people) were those who recovered little or no sleep lost during the week; group 2 (22,901 people) recovered a maximum of 0.45 hours; group 3 (2,692 people) from 0.45 to 1.28 hours; and group 4 (22,695 people) with the maximum number of hours of sleep recovered.
Those who reported sleeping less than 7 hours a night (19,816 participants, 21.8%) were classified as sleep deprived. Participants were followed for an average of almost 14 years: it emerged that those who had recovered more hours of sleep on the weekend had a 19% reduced heart risk compared to those in group 1. In the subgroup of patients with less than 7 hours of sleep a night, those with the greatest recovery of sleep on the weekend had a 20% reduced heart risk. (ANSA).
2024-08-30 10:45:29