- Each hour of going to bed later than in the week raises heart disease risk by 11%
- Sleeping longer has no health benefits if you have gone to bed at a later time
- Past study found link with social jet lag and risk of heart disease and diabetes
- Causes bigger waists, higher blood sugars and lower ‘good’ cholesterol
- ‘Sleep regularity plays a significant role in our health,’ says researcher
Claudia Tanner For Mailonline
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Going to bed and waking up later on the weekends can raise your chances of getting heart disease, according to new research.
Scientists have even quantified the risk – they say each hour of going to bed later than normal is associated with an 11 percent increase.
This adds weight to previous research linking heart disease and what experts call ‘social jet lag’, that is having different sleep patterns on the weekends than during the work week.
The new findings also confirmed a link between a change in sleeping routine and feeling more tired and moody, which is well-documented.
Furthermore, sleeping in longer was found to have no health benefit if you have gone to bed at a later time than usual, according to the University of Arizona in Tucson.
‘These results indicate that sleep regularity, beyond sleep duration alone, plays a significant role in our health,’ said lead author Sierra B. Forbush, a research assistant at the university’s Sleep and Health Research Program.
‘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.’
Waking up early on workdays – only to sleep in on your days off – is known as ‘social jet lag’ because it wreaks havoc with your body’s biological clock
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How they conducted the research
The team analyzed responses from 984 adults between the ages of 22 and 60 years who had completed a sleep questionnaire which asked them about their habitual bedtimes and wake times.
They calculated each individual’s ‘social jet lag’ by subtracting the mid-point of their weekday sleep cycle from the mid-point of their weekend sleep cycle.
Overall health was self-reported using a standardized scale, and survey questions also assessed sleep duration, insomnia, cardiovascular disease, fatigue, and sleepiness.
Why is ‘social jet lag’ is so harmful?
The Arizona study, published in the journal Sleep, does not explain how they came to their conclusions. However, a previous study in 2015 found similar results.
A team from the University of Pittsburgh studied a group of adults aged 30 to 54 years.
They found that people with the biggest shift in sleep routines between workdays and days off were more likely to have health problems that are risk factors for diabetes and heart disease.
The symptoms included extra girth around the midsection and higher levels of sugars and fats in the blood.
The participants with ‘social jet lag’ also had lower levels of high density lipoprotein cholesterol – which is the ‘good kind’ of cholesterol that works to prevent damage to blood vessels.
The researchers acknowledge that the results didn’t definitively prove that social jet lag causes diabetes or heart disease.
However, it does suggest that the connection needs to be examined further, according to lead author Dr Patricia Wong.
What the experts say
Germany scientist Till Roenneberg from Ludwig-Maximilian University, who coined the term ‘social jet lag’ told Reuters that he was not surprised by the Pittsburgh study results.
‘We had already known from various epidemiological and experimental studies that metabolism – and especially glucose/insulin metabolism – is challenged by living against one’s clock,’ he said.
‘The links between body mass index, metabolic syndromes, and cardiovascular pathologies are well established, so this report was a welcome support of earlier findings.’
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