Sleep Debt: Can We Compensate For Sleep Deprivation On Weekends? By Dan Fries for Natural Blaze
- The Facts: A recently study reveals the link between sleeping in on weekends and lowered mortality risk, yet another study shows that night owls have a 10% higher mortality risk than morning people, emphasizing that this is a public health issue.
- Reflect On: Is our obsession with “sleep compensation” just an unhealthy way to try to overcome the reality of socially imposed timing? Is consistency and rhythm more important than the number of hours we sleep?
The idea of “paying off sleep debt” that accumulates throughout the work week has thus far been widely dismissed as wishful thinking. The general consensus is that you either get enough sleep each night or you don’t – and cramming in a few extra hours on your days off, although it might feel good, can’t possibly fix the physiological damage caused by sleep deprivation.
But here’s some great news for all of us who’ve been hoping that the sleep debt we pile on could somehow be paid off on those blissful weekend mornings. A study published in 2018 in the Journal of Sleep Research suggests that we may be able to “catch up on sleep” after all, by sleeping in on our days off.
It’s not that straightforward, however.
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A different take on sleep deprivation research
For this study, researchers gathered the data of more than 38,000 adults from Sweden, which was collected in a medical survey in 1997. The survey included two questions that were keys to this research: one about sleep duration during workdays/weeknights, and the other concerning sleep duration on days off.
And that’s exactly what makes this study stand out from the previous research concerning sleep deprivation and mortality risk. Previous studies focused on questions about the “usual” sleep duration of participants, while this one focuses specifically on the link between the “usual” sleep duration and the occurrence of sleeping in.
Using Sweden’s national death register, the research team followed up on the cohort for 13 years, controlling for the factors that can contribute to health or mortality risk (gender, smoking, BMI, etc.)
They found that those who slept 5 hours or less per night had a 65% higher risk of death during the study period than those who slept 6-7 hours nightly. However, the participants with short weekday sleep who habitually slept in on weekends didn’t appear to have an increased mortality risk.
Now, these findings clearly lead to the assumption that we could compensate for lost sleep in some way, but it’s far from definitive proof. A weekend sleep-in may be able to mitigate the effects of week-long exhaustion, but there’s certainly a limit, as many physiological changes induced by cumulative sleep debt can be long-term.
Perhaps a more important factor than the number of extra hours of sleep is consistency and the possibility of establishing well-timed cycles of regular sleep and sleeping in.
In the end, no matter how we put it, our search for recurring sleep compensation reflects a deeper issue.
