Why You Should Stop Sleeping Late On The Weekends

December 26, 2015 | by Robin Andrews

Weve got some bad news: Sleeping a few extra hours on the weekend may actually be bad
for you. In effect, by spending a few additional hours in the land of dreams, you are giving
yourself social jet lag, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical
Endocrinology and Metabolism. This, they say, can lead to health problems in the long run.
Circadian rhythms, which are also found in plants, animals, fungi and some bacteria,
allow organisms to coordinate their biological activity with the day-night cycle. Although this
rhythm is built-in, it is adjusted to the local environment using zeitgebers (time givers),
external clues like temperature, light levels and so on.
By changing our sleeping patterns over a short period of time, we are causing our natural
rhythm to become out of sync with the surrounding zeitgebers, which in effect is what jet lag
is. This new study aimed to investigate this phenomenon in a non-invasive way, allowing the
subjects to live their normal lives while the researchers unobtrusively monitored their sleep
patterns.
Over the course of the research, 447 peoples sleep patterns were tracked using sleep
monitors attached to their wrists, which estimated sleep time based on the movement or
lack thereof of the participants. Their health status was also assessed, and several blood
samples were taken throughout the study. In particular, the researchers were looking for
changes in blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
As expected, participants' sleep patterns changed over the weekend, with many of the
subjects staying up later and sleeping for longer. Worryingly, the researchers found an
apparent correlation between this shift in sleeping pattern and the appearance of markers of
detrimental health effects. The more dramatic the weekend shift was, the more likely the
subject was to show lower levels of good cholesterol and higher amounts
of triglycerides(other fatty substances) in their blood precursors to heart disease in the
long term.

Those with a more dramatic shift were also the most likely to experience weight gain and
exhibit symptoms associates with the onset of diabetes. Although this study did not show that
anyone developed heart disease or diabetes, it does imply that sleeping in and staying up far
later on weekends, and then switching back to a normal weekday work pattern, may
eventually have a negative effect on your health.

However, the study did have some limitations: In particular, the researchers did not explore
whether participants with greater social jet lag had different circadian rhythms than those
with less. This means that certain people's own circadian rhythms may have been more suited
to the weekend sleeping pattern, whereas others' may have been more compatible with the
weekday sleep schedule.
A similar study, albeit more invasive, was conducted in 2012 by Harvard University. In this
instance, the subjects were locked in a laboratory for several weeks, and were only allowed
5.6 hours sleep a night on a 28-hour-long day. Without a doubt, the most
significant detrimental effect was to the subjects metabolism, their ability to convert
nutrients into energy.
At the beginning of the study, all the participants were physically healthy; by the end of it,
three were beginning to show signs of prediabetes, in that they had incredibly high sugar
levels that the body was almost unable to reduce. The others were progressing rapidly
towards this state.
Sleep disruption is already known to increase the likelihood of getting heart disease, diabetes
and obesity; this new study, along with others, implies that by snoozing in for longer on the
weekend, we are effectively causing our own circadian misalignment and risking our health
as a result.
Source : i fucking love science
Questions
1. What do you think about the passage above?
2. Have you ever slept at late night on weekends? If yes, Tell us your story ! If not, Tell
me the reason why you never did it.
3. If you ever did this thing before, how do you solve your habit ?.