American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist Ernest Hemingway once said: "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?" While a lot of us may nod in agreement and talk about how we cannot wait for the weekend to sleep in and laze around, that may not be the best idea.
Also read: Japanese boy Itsuki Morita, 6, becomes world's youngest club DJ
A research from the University of Arizona, Tuscon, has found out that sleeping for more number of hours during the weekend may lead to "social jet lag," which in turn increases the risk of heart diseases. A person experiences social jet lag when they go to sleep and wake up much later on weekends, as compared to weekdays.
The study has found that social jet lag increases the risk of heart diseases by about 11 percent and also leads to poor health, fatigue, sleepiness and mood swings.
"These results indicate that sleep regularity, beyond sleep duration alone, plays a significant role in our health," Science Daily quoted lead author Sierra B. Forbush, an undergraduate research assistant in the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, as saying. "This suggests that a regular sleep schedule may be an effective, relatively simple, and inexpensive preventative treatment for heart disease as well as many other health problems."
For the study, researchers worked with 984 adults between the ages of 22 and 60 years and assessed them using the Sleep Timing Questionnaire. The overall health of the participants was also taken into consideration through a survey that gauged sleep duration, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, fatigue, and sleepiness.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends adults to get seven or more hours of sleep per night on a regular basis with appropriate timing and regularity.
