Don’t feel guilty next time you sleep in on the weekend. Doing so may actually be good for your health.
For people younger than 65 years old, sleeping less than five hours a night during the weekend was associated with a 52% higher mortality rate compared to those who sleep seven hours, according to a new report published in the Journal of Sleep Research. Sleeping less than five hours during the week and weekend also showed increased mortality, but sleeping longer during the weekends can help compensate for the hours missed during the week, the report suggests. Researchers analyzed data of nearly 44,000 subjects for 13 years.
Individuals older than 65 years old had no association between short or long hours of sleep during the week or weekend and mortality, the research found. But when people slept for different lengths of time during the week and over the weekend, they were more likely to sleep either less than five hours or more than eight hours — and with no consistency.
Not everyone subscribes to a solid seven or eight hours of sleep every night. President Trump sleeps four to five hours a night, his then-doctor Ronny Jackson said earlier this year. About a third of U.S. adults get less than seven hours of sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Men need almost 8 full hours a night, whereas women need 7.6, according to a study published in the journal Sleep that tracked 3,760 people over seven years. Each person has their own requirements for how much sleep they really need, based on genetics, another study found.
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Missing out on your Zs can be detrimental to overall health, as the latest study found. Lack of sleep can be linked to diseases, including bowel, prostate or breast cancer, said Matthew Walker director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. He says everyone needs at least eight hours of sleep, and anything less is risking sickness and disease.
How to get that much sleep? Go to bed and wake up at the same time regularly, keep the room cool, make the room dark and stay away from caffeine or alcohol after 2 p.m. Other suggestions include hiding your alarm clock, so you aren’t checking what time it is as you drift to sleep, and avoiding phones and tablets, which emit “blue light,” which disrupts your natural sleep in the hours before bedtime.