A new research has revealed that sleeping in the weekend does lower the risk of heart disease by as much as 20%. Some studies by the University of Colorado Boulder investigated the sleeping pattern of more than one hundred and thousand participants and established that those who slept for longer hours during the weekends in order to make for a week’s loss had a lower instance of cardiovascular problems when compared with participants who had smooth sleeping patterns every week.

The existing view in Sleeper’s study which will be published in the Journal of Sleep Research is that the consistent sleep schedule is always healthier. The lead researcher of the study was Dr. Sarah Thompson who said, “Although the ideal approach to getting adequate amounts of sleep is to keep regular sleeping hours, it appears that there may be a measure of cardiovascular advantage that people who are restricted to minimum sleep during working days can derive from sleeping in the course of weekends. ”

That is, within the group of participants who claimed that they slept one to two additional hours during the weekends compared with weekdays, the risk of developing heart disease in the ten-year follow-up period was reduced by as much as 15-20 percent. The protective was most pronounced in the population that sleep 4-6 h/night on work-days, or those aged 40-65 years.

The authors, however, note that oversleeping on the weekends, which the researchers defined as getting more than 3 hours beyond one’s average weekday sleep is actually not helpful and could even be harmful. “It is important to strike a balance:” Dr. Thompson said, ‘Moderate sleep, especially catch up sleep seems to have advantages, but excessive sleep can disturb synchronisations and might actually rid you of the benefits. ’

The study also sought to identify possible explanation for the protective effect observed. This was seen even more in some of the blood tests done on the participants where it was seen that the participants who had caught up with their sleeps during the weekend had low levels of stress hormones and inflammatory maker related to cardiovascular diseases. From this it can be deduced that people who sleep more during the weekend, may be able to alleviate their bodies from the effects of chronic stress, and in effect decrease the body’s levels of inflammation.

However, other sleep experts, who did not participate in the study, said that more tests and analyses were needed to confirm the studies. Stanford University sleep specialist Dr Michael Chen was equally cautious while noting, “This study is insightful but the best way to sleep healthier has been regular, sound sleep everyday of the week. ”

The research group recognizes that further investigations are warranted with a view of uncovering future effects of such sleep pattern. They would like to research more to find out whether there are subsets of the population that could gain most when following this strategy and to find out what negative effects may be occasioned by relying on weekend sleep-in.

Based on these results, health professionals are advising people to become more conscious of the quality and quantity of their sleep. Some of the ways that can help in the improvement of the quality and quantity of sleep include the following; Going to bed at the right time, avoiding bright screens before you go to bed, and making the necessary changes to your bedroom environment.

This present work joined the list of studies that have indicated that perhaps flexibility of sleep patterns may be more than what have been initially expected especially with the recent revelation on the importance of sleep to overall health. To that end, although it is preferable to aim for fixed, adequate amounts of sleep these findings provide comfort to shift workers who are unable to achieve guidelines on work days.