Very often we have come across people who say they plan to catch up on their sleep during the weekend. These people mean that they could not sleep enough during the weekdays and plan to sleep during the weekend. This is a common trend followed by employed people these days.
However, health experts have warned against this particular sleep habit that is adopted by several people these days.
In a recent post on social media, Dr Avind Bhateja has addressed this unhealthy issue. In the video, Dr Bhateja talks about sleep bulimia, which means not sleeping enough on the weekdays but trying to catch up on the sleep during the weekends.
In the video, posted on Instagram, Dr Bhateja cites the podcast episode of Matthew Walker where he had talked about a study titled "Ad libitum Weekend Recovery Sleep Fails to Prevent Metabolic Dysregulation during a Repeating Pattern of Insufficient Sleep and Weekend Recovery Sleep."
The said study was published in the journal Current Biology in 2019. The researchers studied "how ad libitum weekend recovery sleep impacts circadian timing, energy intake, body weight, and insulin sensitivity during recurrent insufficient sleep following ad libitum weekend recovery sleep."
In the study, three groups of individuals were studied lab for two weeks and followed three different sleep patterns. One of the sleep patterns is what we called the weekend catch or up sleep or sleep bulimia. They found trying to catch up on your sleep on the weekends is something that does not work.
The doctor explains you will be unable to completely restore your sleep by anything more than 25% by sleeping extra on the weekends. It also impairs the release of melatonin in your blood so that's the reason why you feel foggy on Monday morning. The other things they found is an average of about half to two kgs of weight gain in two weeks and worsening insulin sensitivity and a predisposition to so try to get regular sleep of atleast 7 hours every night rather than trying to catch up on your sleep on the weekends.
Read the post here:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuwkMJwu2rA/https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuwkMJwu2rA/
