Wake up! Oversleeping on weekends could affect your heart’s health

If we believe that we can make up for a lack of sleep during the week by indulging in a weekend slumber, you’re solely mistaken.

A recent study by Penn State scientists, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, unearthed a startling revelation – depriving ourselves of adequate sleep, with a mere five hours per night, wreaks havoc on our cardiovascular health.

Our heart rate and blood pressure, two vital markers of our well-being, deteriorate under such conditions. In fact, attempting to compensate for lost sleep during the weekends is insufficient to return these measures to normal.

According to Anne-Marie Chang, associate professor of biobehavioural health and co-author of the study, only 65 per cent of adults in the United States regularly attain the recommended seven hours of slumber per night.

“Our research reveals a potential mechanism for this longitudinal relationship, where enough successive hits to your cardiovascular health while you’re young could make your heart more prone to cardiovascular disease in the future,” said Dr Chang.

To explore the effects of sleep patterns on our cardiovascular health, the team enlisted 15 healthy men aged between 20 and 35 for an intensive 11-day inpatient sleep study.

For the first three nights, the participants were allowed to sleep up to 10 hours per night to achieve a baseline sleep level. For the next five nights, the participants’ sleep was restricted to five hours per night, followed by two recovery nights, in which they were again allowed to sleep up to 10 hours per night.

To evaluate the effects of this sleep regime on cardiovascular health, the researchers measured the participants’ resting heart rates and blood pressure every two hours during the day.

It was found that heart rate increased by nearly one beat per minute (BPM) with each successive day of the study.

“Both heart rate and systolic blood pressure increased with each successive day and did not return to baseline levels by the end of the recovery period,” lead author David Reichenberger said.

He added, “So, despite having the additional opportunity to rest, by the end of the weekend of the study, their cardiovascular systems still had not recovered.”

Dr Chang noted that longer periods of sleep recovery may be necessary to recover from multiple, consecutive nights of sleep loss.

“Sleep is a biological process, but it’s also a behavioural one and one that we often have a lot of control over. Not only does sleep affect our cardiovascular health, but it also affects our weight, our mental health, our ability to focus and our ability to maintain healthy relationships with others, among many other things,” said Dr Chang.