Can Sleeping in Save You From Heart Disease? One Study Says "Yes"

Sure, the early bird catches the worm, but the one who sleeps in each morning lives longer. At least, that's what a sleep study seems to be reporting after a team of cardiac specialists discovered that sleeping in on the weekends may improve heart health.

And while the news is music to the ears of weary people everywhere, it seems to further highlight just how important of a role a good night's sleep has when it comes to our overall health. So stifle those yawns and keep scrolling to learn how sleeping late on the weekends can keep heart disease at bay.

The European Society of Cardiology published a study on Aug. 29, 2024, saying that people may actually be able to make up for their busy weekday lifestyles by catching up on sleep over the weekend. This information was shared by Eureka Alert, and it explains the study's claims that you can repair the damage you do when you don't get enough shut-eye during the week simply by hitting the "snooze" button on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Researchers arrived at this conclusion after monitoring a pool of 90,903 subjects and calculating how many hours of sleep they got during the week, the amount of "compensatory sleep" they enjoyed over the weekend (an average of 1.28 to 16.06 total extra hours of sleep), and their heart disease risks.

Researchers then used hospitalization records to determine whether these folks experienced any heart-related issues, including heart failure, stroke, and ischemic heart disease over nearly 14 years. In the end, they discovered that the cohort who caught up on those missed weeknight zzzz's over the weekend was the group with the lowest rates of heart disease. 

Not only that, but they determined that sleeping in on the weekend can actually reduce your risk of heart disease by one-fifth!

While it may not come as any surprise that getting less than the recommended eight hours of sleep a night can be bad for your long-term health, there are some immediate symptoms you're likely to experience when you don't get enough shut-eye. According to the National Institutes of Health, they include:

• Feelings of frustration, worry, or crankiness
• Trouble focusing and learning
• Delayed reaction time
• Poor decision making

The longer you go without getting an adequate amount of sleep, the worse your symptoms get. You may find yourself experiencing high blood pressure, kidney disease, obesity, heart disease, and more. That is to say, if you're having trouble getting enough sleep each night, you may want to pencil in some extra downtime in the morning on the weekend to sleep in. If this study is correct, it may end up being the best thing for your health all day!