Sleeping in on the weekends might prevent an early death | Hacker News Reader

Sleeping in on the weekends might prevent an early death

mashable.com

92 pointsetrevino39 comments

Better title : "Catching up on your week sleep deprivation in the weekend : it might just help you avoid dying prematurely"

Don't mess up your sleep schedule on weekends if you already sleep 7/8h in the week. The study was done on people sleeping less than 5 hours. Title is a bit misleading in that sense.

Also it is generally better to have a consistent sleep schedule, because circadian rhythms and routine. Good sleep habits are highly correlated with health.

As I get older, it is increasingly difficult to maintain the 4 hr weekday sleep and then crash on weekends. The body can no longer tolerate this type of variation.

>Don't mess up your sleep schedule on weekends if you already sleep 7/8h in the week.

I doubt that's even possible for most people.

[Edit] I mean it's very difficult to sleep even longer on some days if you're not sleep deprived in the first place.

Whilst I think the conventional wisdom that getting enough sleep consistently throughout the week is the best way to go makes sense, I've known for years that catching up on the weekends for lost sleep during the week makes me feel a whole lot better.

For me it all started when I moved from a job where I could roll in whenever I wanted, and thus got a consistent 8 or so hours of sleep every night, to a situation where I had to be in at 8.30 - 9AM consistently - which, btw, is a real pain in the ass if you're a night owl.

Sadly I have largely lost my night owl capabilities due to a few years of having to be at work at a set time, but I still "catch up" at the weekends, and it's definitely better than not catching up by a very wide margin, and it keeps me a functional non-homicidal human being.

What would you describe as "night owl capabilities" that you have lost, as opposed to merely adjusting your sleep schedule? Is there a downside to up early / bed early?

I think modern society is in a sleep deprivation epidemic that needs to be addressed, and just weekends isn't going to cut it.

Agreed. I work 8 hours every weekday with an hour train ride- not much time to sleep after eating and leisure are accounted for.

Something has to go if you don't have time to sleep. That is the most important thing you do, you can't function or stay sane without sleep. I'm not kidding. Priority should be something like 1. Sleep, 2. Drink and eat, 3. Work, 4. Leisure.

If you have to, use the train ride to sleep. That is two hours per day of sleep if you can fall asleep fast.

sleep is not equal and small portions of sleep dont add up to one long session.

Don't forget exercise, which is great for your sleep hygiene.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting tired of these articles. Maybe I'm cranky today from lack of sleep (except I had 9 hours last night).

Here's an article that says that over sleeping shortens lifespans:

https://www.allure.com/story/oversleeping-shortens-lifespan

Or human longevity is related to regular sleeping cycles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067693/

Or why you should stop sleeping in on the weekends:

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sleeping-weeke...

Did you know that more than 8 hours of sleep is bad for you?

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/7333.php

Waking up on a Sunday morning, realise you don't have to get up, roll over and go back to sleep. One of lifes pleasures.

I'm looking forward to the day my kids don't wake me up at 7, every day. (They are 5 and 2)

So do I... they are 5 and 6...

9 and 6 here. I'm at a point that I can feed them and get them placated (electronics, cartoons, whatever) and go back to sleep for another hour or two on the weekends. So I guess that's a mild improvement.

School days they, of course, refuse to get out of bed.

My 6 year old is a morning person and I am not. She puts on Katie Perry via the Amazon Echo, tidies up and lets the dog out so those excuses don't exist for me to get out of bed, then she goes and crafts/draws/watches a show for a couple hours and enjoys her alone time while I slowly wake up. Unless we have something planned to go do, she gets really irritated if I get out of bed before 9 o'clock and disrupt her morning alone time.

She started doing it on her own when she was 4, but it really started to mesh when I realized what she was doing and set it up for her to eat breakfast without my help (set out a cup and bowl/plate, put juice/milk into a smaller container and move it to the bottom shelf of the fridge, set out muffins or cereal or whatever she's into at the time, etc).

She also sleeps like a rock, so my night-owl habits don't wake her. It's an absolutely amazing routine and I'm terrified of when she grows out of it.

Don't worry, pretty soon you will be trying to wake them up every morning.

I almost don't have the heart to tell you but... by the time they get old enough to start sleeping in, you'll be too old to. After about 40, you'll wake up on Saturday thinking, "oh my gosh, it must be nearly noon!" and realize it's only 8:30 and you're wide awake.

Sleeping in until 8:30 sounds amazing. Much better than the current 6:00 my toddler prefers.

"After about 40, you'll wake up on Saturday thinking, "oh my gosh, it must be nearly noon!" and realize it's only 8:30 and you're wide awake."

Good news: if you maintain your exercise regimen - especially your resistance/weight training - you can maintain the ability to sleep 8 or 9 or 10 hours in a night.

Since we got kids we had a system with my wife: Saturdays I sleep in, Sundays she does. It really kept us sane.

My wife and I have the same process, and it's worth its weight in... well, processes have no inherent weight, but, anyway, it's amazing. Highly-recommended. Also gives the awake parent some valuable quality time with the kids, build some traditions unique to that one set of relationships.

I get top sleep in till 8 both days, after that its all systems go.

the wife doesn't sleep heavily so she wakes earlier and just leaves me alone :-P

Maybe it's just me but I can't stand 'wasting' weekend hours in bed.

It's my only real personal time, I want to maximise it.

Now, how to explain this to my 3 year old...

Man, I wish sleeping in was still an option.

So having children leads to an early death? Sounds about right...

Glad I snipped that in the bud

Having young children that never grow up, sure. Try to avoid that.

On the weekend if my first woke me up, we would start doing chores. He learned very quickly to fix his own breakfast and play quietly (yes, around 3 years of age).

Exactly!

Except, for me, when I was growing up if I woke up my parents for any reason other than a house fire or medical emergency (even accidentally) I'd be severely punished, not just ignored. So my siblings and I played quietly by ourselves most weekend mornings when we were very young.

Sleeping in on the weekends might also cause an early death if you're married to my wife who wants to go on a shopping spree on Saturdays...

From the article: "There were limitations to the study, such as the participants only being asked about their sleeping habits only once, making it impossible to detect changes in their sleep habits over time."

Asking them one time about their behavior over many years? I wouldn't place much credence in the study's reported results then.

less than 5 hours a day? sleeping more than 5 hours a day does not count as "sleeping in".

also

> For those who only manage to get less than five hours of shut eye throughout the week, but then have a longer snooze on the weekends, there was no heightened mortality risk.

this is just clickbait

And they define it as a sleeping for more than 5 hours:

"people under the age of 65 who get less than five hours sleep on the weekend had an increased risk of death"

The safest part of the day for most people is likely the time they spend asleep in bed. If the baseline is 16hrs of consciousness, an extra 2hrs of it every day presents a ~12% increase in opportunities to off yourself accidentally. That's exacerbated by the side effects of loss of sleep of course, but there's a fundamental there that you're not likely to erase.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jsr.12712

Summary of the paper this mashable post is based around

I avoid stuff like this. A few months ago, I read a similar article stating that trying to catch up on sleep during the weekend doesn't work. If you wonder why people are so skeptical of science, it's stuff like this.

Highly recommend this [1] podcast to understand what sleep actually does and how sleep deprived our modern society is.

[1] https://youtu.be/pwaWilO_Pig

Sleeping in on the weekend can also be a symptom of being rich, which might also prevent early death.

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