Sleep on the weekend - should it?

Many people often have a "baked" sleep routine on weekends to reward themselves after stressful working and studying hours. But is this habit really good?

>>>Sleeping a lot also causes illness

The study was published in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism and revealed that using two weekends to actually sleep could not compensate for any sleep-related harm or lack of sleep during the week caused.

Dr. Alexandros Vgontzas, a professor at Penn State's Hershey Sleep Research and Treatment Center, co-authored the study, said: "The long-term sleeping is still effective. results in the recovery of harm caused by lack of sleep during the week, but to a very small extent. If this "sleep-fatigue / sleep-recovery-recovery" cycle is repeated over a long period of time, it will Very harmful to the body ".

This study was performed on 30 healthy adult volunteers who lasted for 13 days. Accordingly, participants will sleep 8 hours / night for the first 4 days. The next 6 days, the amount of sleep reduced to 6 hours / night. The last 3 days are the "recovery" period with 10 hours / night.

During sleep sessions, the researchers conducted brain wave monitoring in conjunction with specialized tests to monitor alertness, the degree of change of inflammatory hormones and stress hormones by taking blood samples from volunteers. The results showed that after 6 days of sleep deprivation, most participants were in a state of drowsiness and the performance of the concentration tests decreased significantly. The concentration of interleukin-6, an agent that causes inflammation, increases in blood. These are all bad signs.

But after a 3-day "recovery" of sleep, interleukin-6 levels are low and sleepiness in volunteers is also improved. However, on the general ground, the performance of the focus ability tests is not very positive.

When we do not get enough sleep, there will be "sleep deprivation" . If this "debt" is too big, it will be difficult to "pay" . The lack of sleep will lead to a variety of health-related problems such as obesity, high blood pressure, mood and negative behavior, reduced productivity and learning, and is likely to cause traffic accidents. or at home. To prevent "sleep deprivation" , scientists recommend that we should make up for sleep after each sleep deprivation. According to Dr. Vgontzas, "You should sleep and recover by prolonging your night's sleep or taking a nap the next day without sleep."

However, the author of the study also admitted: "We have not been able to find the long-term effects of the" sleep-fatigue / sleep-recovery-recovery " cycle that is being repeated every week in many. people".

A similar study was also conducted at Surrey University (UK) with the support of the BBC. The study revealed that when volunteers reduced their sleep each night from 7.5 hours to 6.5 hours, more than 500 genes were involved in inflammatory processes, immune response and antipathy. Stress is caused by stress. When they added an extra hour of sleep / night, the opposite happened.

However, sleeping too much at the weekend is extremely harmful. A study by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed that in adults if an average of 10 hours or more of sleep a day is very easy to suffer from chronic diseases such as diabetes and anxiety. and obesity.

Dr. M. Safwan Badr, president of the Institute of Sleep Medicine (USA), said: "An adult should sleep 7-9 hours a night to have good health. This is even more important to those people are suffering from chronic diseases ".

Sleep researchers at Harvard Medical School (USA) note that keeping a stable sleep schedule even on weekends not only helps balance the time of the biological clock, but it can also Helping people go to sleep and wake up easier.