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Most of us carry a "sleep debt" for at least part of the workweek – we simply need more sleep than we can. The question is: can we pay the sleep debt of the week with extra sleep on weekends? The answer is perhaps, but & nbsp; there could be a penalty & nbsp; to pay also.
New search Researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder suggest that even if we get some benefits from sleeping on weekends, our health is still affected. It's a problem of consistency.
"Our findings suggest that the common behavior of burning the candle during the week and trying to compensate for it over the weekend is not an effective health strategy," said study lead author Kenneth Wright, director of the UC Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory -Boulder. .
The researchers recruited 36 volunteers, aged 18-39, and divided them into three groups. Those in the first group slept for about nine hours a night for nine consecutive nights. Those in the second group slept for only five hours for the same number of nights. The third group was limited to five hours in the first five nights, and it was then allowed to sleep as much as they wanted during the weekend, followed by two more five-night nights.
The researchers tracked the eating habits of volunteers during the study period and also insulin sensitivity through blood tests. Previous studies associated sleep loss with reduced insulin sensitivity, which increases the risk of developing diabetes in chronically poor patients. Poor sleep is also related to obesity, in part because erratic sleep schedules lead to more late night snacks.
Volunteers in both sleep-restricted groups ate more at night, gained weight, and experienced reduced insulin sensitivity during the study period. The group that slept the most during the weekend experienced some benefits over the other group (they ate less after dinner, for example), but the gains disappeared when the weekend ended and they returned for the five-hour nights.
"In the end, we did not see any benefit in any metabolic outcome in people who got to sleep over the weekend," said Chris Depner, assistant professor of integrative physiology research.
And, at least in a significant way, those who sleep on weekends have had an even worse result. The group that slept five hours a night had a 13% decline in insulin sensitivity throughout the body, while sleepers at the weekend had a decline of 9-27%, with a particularly poor sensitivity to liver and muscle. This is worrying because poor insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle is & nbsp; one of the key drivers of type 2 diabetes.
"It may be that yo-yoing from one side to another – changing the time we eat, changing the circadian clock and then going back to sleep insufficiently is a unique distraction," Wright said.
So where does that leave us?
It seems that the main problem with the sleeping weekend is what happens on Monday. We return to sleep loss mode, starting the cycle again. Also, as we all know, sleeping more on Saturdays and Sundays in the morning makes bedtime a decent time Sunday night more difficult. The weekend sleepers in this study slept only an hour longer, and even that was enough to throw them away.
This was a small study and will need to be replicated with larger groups, but the basic findings are still instructive. Getting a little more sleep over the weekend seems to "pay" part of the sleep debt, but does nothing to improve the consistency of sleep, and that's where the real benefits come from.
Which brings us back to the gold standard argument for sleep: consistently getting at least seven hours a night is the best way to maintain sleep and health balance. A pattern difficult to achieve, but it is what science points out as most important.
The study was published in the journal Current biology.
You can find David DiSalvo at & nbsp;Twitter,& nbsp;Facebook& nbsp;Google Plusand on your site& nbsp;daviddisalvo.org.
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Most of us carry a "sleep debt" for at least part of the workweek – we simply need to sleep more than we can. The question is: can we pay the sleep debt of the week with extra sleep on weekends? The answer is perhaps, but there could be a penalty to pay as well.
A new research from researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder suggests that even if we get some benefits from sleeping on weekends, our health is still attained. It's a problem of consistency.
"Our findings suggest that the common behavior of burning the candle during the week and trying to compensate for it over the weekend is not an effective health strategy," said study lead author Kenneth Wright, director of the UC Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory -Boulder. .
The researchers recruited 36 volunteers, aged 18-39, and divided them into three groups. Those in the first group slept for about nine hours a night for nine consecutive nights. Those in the second group slept for only five hours for the same number of nights. The third group was limited to five hours in the first five nights, and it was then allowed to sleep as much as they wanted during the weekend, followed by two more five-night nights.
Researchers tracked the eating habits of volunteers during the study period and also checked for insulin sensitivity through blood tests. Previous studies have linked sleep loss to reduced insulin sensitivity, which is believed to increase the risk of developing diabetes for chronically poor patients. Poor sleep is also related to obesity, in part because erratic sleep schedules lead to more late night snacks.
Volunteers in both sleep-restricted groups ate more at night, gained weight, and experienced reduced insulin sensitivity during the study period. The group that slept the most during the weekend experienced some benefits over the other group (they ate less after dinner, for example), but the gains disappeared when the weekend ended and they returned for the five-hour nights.
"In the end, we did not see any benefit in any metabolic outcome in people who got to sleep over the weekend," said Chris Depner, assistant professor of integrative physiology research.
And in at least one significant way, those who sleep on weekends have had an even worse result. The group that slept five hours a night had a 13% decline in insulin sensitivity throughout the body, while sleepers at the weekend had a decline of 9-27%, with a particularly poor sensitivity to liver and muscle. This is worrying because insufficient insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle is a major cause of type 2 diabetes.
"It may be that yo-yoing from one side to another – changing the time we eat, changing the circadian clock and then going back to sleep insufficiently is a unique distraction," Wright said.
So where does that leave us?
It seems that the main problem with the sleeping weekend is what happens on Monday. We return to sleep loss mode, starting the cycle again. Also, as we all know, sleeping more on Saturdays and Sundays in the morning makes it harder to fall asleep at a decent time on Sunday night. The weekend sleepers in this study slept only an hour longer, and even that was enough to throw them away.
This was a small study and will need to be replicated with larger groups, but the basic findings are still instructive. Having a little more sleep over the weekend seems to "pay" part of the sleep debt, but does nothing to improve the consistency of sleep, and that is where the real benefits come from.
Which brings us back to the gold standard argument for sleep: consistently getting at least seven hours a night is the best way to maintain sleep and health balance. A pattern difficult to achieve, but it is what science points out as most important.
The study was published in the journal Current biology.
You can find David DiSalvo at Twitter, Facebook, Google Plusand on your site daviddisalvo.org.