Can Extra Sleep on Weekends Help With Sleep Deprivation?

We know that getting enough good quality sleep is pivotal to living our best life. Most healthy adults need around 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, although individual sleep needs vary. So, what happens to our body when we don’t get the sleep we require? These lost sleep hours are known as sleep debt, and this debt accumulates, growing each and every time we reduce our nightly sleep.

No problem, we think, we’ll make up for our lost sleep on the weekend! Turns out it’s not that simple. Research suggests that extra weekend sleep may provide some short-term recovery, but it should not be relied upon to fully compensate for regularly getting too little sleep during the week.

Contents

• What Is Sleep Debt?
• Why Do So Many People Suffer from Sleep Deprivation?
• Study Report from the ‘Journal of Sleep Research’
• Study Report from ‘Current Biology’
• ‘Current Biology’ Study Results
• What the ‘Current Biology’ Researchers Found
• In Conclusion

What Is Sleep Debt?

Sleep debt can be described as the difference between the number of hours your body requires to function effectively and the number of hours sleep you are actually getting. Most healthy adults need around 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, although individual sleep needs vary.

We need to understand that it’s not only our general health that suffers from accumulating a sleep debt: there are other negative effects like impaired judgement, lack of concentration and irritability, while regularly getting insufficient sleep has also been associated with longer-term health problems including cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and obesity. It’s also important to understand that people who suffer from sleep debt may not always realise just how tired they are, simply because they have become accustomed to functioning with insufficient sleep.

Why Do So Many People Suffer from Sleep Deprivation?

Sleep deprivation can occur because of a sleep disorder, like sleep apnoea, but it can also occur because of our extremely hectic lives. People are working longer hours and taking on more commitments, resulting in a stressful life. Research has linked insufficient sleep on a regular basis with an increased risk of several metabolic and cardiovascular health problems, including diabetes and obesity.

Study Report from the ‘Journal of Sleep Research’

A study published in the Journal of Sleep Research in 2018 suggested that weekend sleep might help compensate for shorter sleep during the working week. The researchers followed 43,880 people for 13 years and found that, among participants under 65, those who had short sleep during weekdays but longer sleep at weekends did not show the same increased mortality risk seen among those who consistently slept for short periods.

The researchers suggested that longer weekend sleep might compensate for some weekday sleep loss. However, this was an observational study, so it could not establish that weekend catch-up sleep itself was responsible for the difference.

Study Report from ‘Current Biology’

However, a 2019 study published in Current Biology found that weekend recovery sleep did not prevent some of the metabolic effects associated with repeated sleep restriction.

In order to investigate this, 36 healthy, young, adult participants were recruited by the researchers. These participants were then randomly divided into three groups, as follows:

• The first group of adults would sleep for 5 hours each and every night, including the weekend;
• The second group of adults would sleep for 5 hours each night during the week, then enjoy unrestricted sleep time at the weekend, followed by two more nights of 5 hours sleep;
• The third group of adults was the control group, and this group could enjoy 9 hours sleep every night on both weeknights and on the weekend.

‘Current Biology’ Study Results

The study results were interesting, in that all participants who had restricted sleep during the week started after-dinner snacking, which ultimately led to weight gain. The participants who were allowed to enjoy a weekend sleep-in consumed fewer calories with their after-dinner snacking than those participants who carried on with their restricted sleep programme.

However, participants who slept in on weekends then returned to restricted sleep hours during the week continued experiencing disruption to their body clock. The after-dinner snacking habit returned when sleep restriction resumed, and body weight increased during the study.

What the ‘Current Biology’ Researchers Found

The researchers noticed that, when it came to specific metabolic changes, the study participants with restricted sleep hours every night had reduced insulin sensitivity with a decrease of around 13%. Typically, higher insulin sensitivity is considered a marker of good metabolic health, while reduced insulin sensitivity can be associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

The researchers were not particularly surprised by the decrease in insulin sensitivity in the restricted sleep group; however, they were surprised that the results of study participants who used the weekend to catch up on missed sleep were not much better. Despite their weekend recovery sleep, these participants still experienced reduced insulin sensitivity. When they returned to restricted sleep during the week, insulin sensitivity in the liver and muscles fell by between 9% and 27%.

In Conclusion

Other than tiredness, short-term effects of insufficient sleep can include problems with memory, concentration, reaction times and driving performance. Regularly getting too little sleep has also been associated with longer-term health problems, including insulin resistance, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Weekend catch-up sleep may provide some short-term recovery, and some research suggests that it could help compensate for occasional weekday sleep loss. However, the evidence does not show that sleeping longer at weekends can fully undo the effects of regularly getting insufficient sleep. A more reliable approach is to aim for adequate, consistent sleep throughout the week whenever possible.

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