Is Weekend Catch Up Sleep Healthy?

Get Your Life Back in Rhythm

Is Weekend Catch Up Sleep Healthy? Getting enough sleep during the workweek is hard. Wouldn't it be great if weekend catch up sleep could undo any damage from sleep deprivation? In this study, I review a new study that goes against decades of sleep research. The Longevity Plan Ma Xue, one of the centenarians we came to love and know during our time in China's Longevity Village, taught a timeless principle. "My life is simple. Because of this, it is easy to know when something is out of balance." Sadly, our modern lives are usually a rhythmic mess. Indeed, when I see new patients whose hearts are out of rhythm, it is usually because their lives are also out of rhythm. We’re generally not just out of rhythm in one way, but rather in multiple ways. And while we might be able to withstand a bit of disequilibrium in one part of our life, it’s hard to keep our balance when so many parts of our lives are so out of sync. But starting quite simply, we can rebuild this balance piece by piece. And perhaps the best place is where almost all of us start each day, and where we end up each night. Modern Life = Lack of Sleep? Most of us wake up based on when we need to be somewhere, and from day to day that often changes. An early morning meeting can prompt a wake-up that is an hour or two earlier than usual. A late plane flight out of town can mean an extra few hours of slumber in the morning. And even if we keep a typical 9:00-to-5:00 workday, our five-days-on-two-days-off schedules promote sleeping timetables that are anything but routine. Of course, very few of us are in a position to perfectly align our schedules to a sunrise-to-sunset existence. There are, however, things that almost all of us can do to bring a more consistent rhythm to our lives. And while we work to bring our lives and our sleep into balance, fortunately, a new study just came out that offers hope. Weekend Catch Up Sleep Study I was amazed to read about a recent study looking at sleep duration and longevity. After sifting through 13 years of records on 43,880 Swedes, they stumbled upon something that was rather interesting. It should come as no surprise that these researchers found that those sleeping five or fewer hours each night increased their chances of dying early by 65%. However, if these same sleep-deprived people could catch up by sleeping longer on the weekend, then their survival was as if they slept seven hours each night. If this is true, it tells us that even if you have an incredibly demanding job, there is no longevity hit provided you can get some weekend catch up sleep. I can't even begin to tell you how this study contradicts decades of previous research. And, quite frankly, I need to see some additional research to convince me that these findings are actually correct. The Dangers of Acute Sleep Deprivation To understand how bad sleep deprivation is for us, we have merely to look at the time of the year in which almost everyone is simultaneously thrown off kilter: when most folks across the United States “spring forward” an hour to accommodate for daylight saving time, effectively losing an hour of sleep. On the Monday following the spring daylight saving change, the incidence of heart attacks rises 24 percent, and the impact continues on Tuesday, when rates drop only slightly to 21 percent above the usual rate. A lack of sleep impacts us right down to the genetic level, affecting the expression of more than 700 genes, which in turn dictate everything from our rates of metabolism, to the way our bodies deal with inflammation, to the antibodies created inside our cells to deal with infections or toxins. Pulling just one late-night work session or just staying up to watch a single TV show leads to the release of some of the same biomarkers that are increased with a concussion. The Snooze Button And we’re doing this damage en masse! Up to 70 million of us struggle with sleep according to the federal Centers fo...