Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here good news for people who use their
Speaker 1: days off as they are intended to rest up after
Speaker 1: a busy week. It turns out those compensatory zas are
Speaker 1: far more beneficial than previously thought, according to a Swedish
Speaker 1: study published in in April issue of the Journal of
Speaker 1: Sleep Research. The study looked at more than forty three
Speaker 1: thousand people who participated in the Swedish National March cohort,
Speaker 1: which began in follow up for every subject continued until
Speaker 1: they died, moved away, or December, when the study officially closed.
Speaker 1: The researchers for the sleep study pulled relevant data from
Speaker 1: the cohort questionnaire about basic sleep habits, like how many
Speaker 1: hours approximately participants sleep on a workday night, as well
Speaker 1: as how many hours they snooze per night on days
Speaker 1: off of work. Response increments ranged from less than five
Speaker 1: hours to greater than nine hours. Previous studies have shown
Speaker 1: that people who consistently sleep too little short sleep is
Speaker 1: defined as five hours or less a night, or too
Speaker 1: much long sleep is nine or more hours per night,
Speaker 1: have higher mortality rates than people who fall into the
Speaker 1: Goldilocks zone in between getting just the right amount of
Speaker 1: sleep every night. However, the authors of the study point
Speaker 1: out that few, if any, of those studies have asked
Speaker 1: participants to differentiate between week day and weekend sleep, which
Speaker 1: makes a big difference, they wrote, in the current study,
Speaker 1: because there are five week days and two weekend days,
Speaker 1: it is likely that self reports of typical sleep duration
Speaker 1: more strongly reflect weekday sleep. Thus, it is of interest
Speaker 1: to investigate the relationship between weekend sleep duration and mortality,
Speaker 1: as well as the different patterns of sleep duration between
Speaker 1: week day and weekend sleep. When the researchers looked at
Speaker 1: all of the data, findings were consistent with previous conclusions
Speaker 1: of increased mortality if both week day and weekend sleep
Speaker 1: are short or when both are long. However, they wrote,
Speaker 1: when weekend sleep is extended after short weekday sleep, no
Speaker 1: association with mortality is seen. We suggest that this may
Speaker 1: reflect positive effects of compensatory sleep. Experts have long advised
Speaker 1: people to get up at the same time each day,
Speaker 1: even on weekends, as a long term strategy for getting
Speaker 1: better sleep each night. The theory is that yo yoing
Speaker 1: sleep habits disturb your circadian rhythms. Dr David Ding's was
Speaker 1: not involved in this sleep study, but he's the chief
Speaker 1: of the Division of Sleep in Chronobiology at the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania Perlman School of Medicine. He told Time Magazine,
Speaker 1: the real question is whether there is in fact a
Speaker 1: build up of deficit or biological changes that are gradual
Speaker 1: over time, even though you get recovery sleep. So while
Speaker 1: this study is great news for those of us who
Speaker 1: like to sleep in on days off, many sleep experts
Speaker 1: say more studies need to be done on this subject.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Alia Hoyt and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: topics that may or may not reinforce your current habits,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.