Sleeping in on weekends could cut your risk of heart disease by up to 20%, new study shows

Researchers at the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing found that sleep-deprived people who “caught up” on shut-eye by sleeping in on weekends reduced their risk of heart disease by up to 20%. Their preliminary work was scheduled for presentation Sunday at the European Society of Cardiology’s Congress 2024 in London.

“Sufficient compensatory sleep is linked to a lower risk of heart disease,” study coauthor Yanjun Song said in a news release ahead of the meeting. “The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays.”

Song’s team used the UK Biobank, a health research database, to analyze the sleep habits of nearly 91,000 people. One limitation, researchers noted, is that while accelerometers recorded sleep data, sleep deprivation (fewer than seven hours a night) was self-reported. Roughly 22% of participants were considered sleep-deprived.

Researchers divided participants into four groups based on how much sleep debt they paid over the weekend, with the most compensatory group catching up on as much as 16 hours of sleep. Overall, people with the most compensatory sleep were 19% less likely to develop heart disease—including stroke, heart failure, ischemic heart disease, and atrial fibrillation—than those with the least compensatory sleep.

Among sleep-deprived participants, those who paid the most sleep debt had a 20% lower risk. Biological sex had no bearing on the results.

“Our results show that for the significant proportion of the population in modern society that suffers from sleep deprivation, those who have the most ‘catch-up’ sleep at weekends have significantly lower rates of heart disease than those with the least,” study coauthor Zechen Liu said in the news release.

Can too much sleeping in be bad for you?

More than a third of U.S. adults don’t get the recommended minimum of seven hours of nightly sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Insufficient sleep is most prevalent among these demographics:

• Men: 37%
• Ages 45 to 64: 39%
• Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders: 49%

From reducing stress to lowering your risk of chronic conditions, adequate sleep is crucial to your physical and mental health and well-being.

Because it can take days to recover from a single hour of lost sleep, attempting to catch up on a week’s worth of deprivation over the weekend may be inadequate. A National Sleep Foundation (NSF) panel on sleep timing and variability highlighted this and other findings in a 2023 literature review published in the journal Sleep Health.

Proper sleep hygiene, the CDC counsels, requires a consistent sleep schedule in which you go to bed and wake up at the same times daily—including weekends. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine takes it a step further, advocating for sleep regularity even when you’re on vacation. Such a routine keeps your circadian rhythm, or body clock, in check. Out-of-sync rhythms have been shown to increase risk of developing immune, neurologic, psychiatric, and cardiometabolic disorders. A study published earlier this year in the journal Sleep found that people with irregular sleep patterns have a higher risk of premature death.

That’s not to say luxuriating in a lie-in here and there is a death sentence. Still, you may be more familiar with the adverse effects of an off-kilter circadian rhythm than you realize. For example, if you regularly wake up at 6 a.m. on weekdays but sleep until 11 a.m. on weekends, you likely aren’t tired enough to go to bed at 11 p.m. Sunday, the time you need to be off in dreamland to get at least seven hours of sleep before 6 a.m. Monday rolls around again. Thus, you kick off another week already sleep-deprived, and the cycle of social jet lag continues.

So, how can you make up for lost sleep on weekends without opening yourself up to health problems down the line? The key lies in moderation. Sleep in, by all means, the NSF says, but aim for no more than two hours of catch-up sleep on your days off. 

For more on building healthy sleep habits:

• Learn how to sleep better on one of the best mattresses picked by experts
• Can’t get a good night’s rest? Watch out for these 8 ways you may be sabotaging your sleep
• I took Headspace’s guided sleep course and I’m finally getting a good night’s rest. Here are the 5 habits I learned
• Poor sleep is tied to faster brain aging, new study says. Here’s how it impacts people as young as 40
• Do men really sleep better than women? Experts explain
• Your boss is probably getting more sleep than you are, survey says. Here’s who catches more z’s than even CEOs, managers, and business owners