The Daily Parker

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Sleep in on the weekends if you can

A Swedish psychologist has preliminary data that suggest sleeping in on the weekends can make up for some sleep loss during the week, maybe:

Sleeping in on a day off feels marvelous, especially for those of us who don't get nearly enough rest during the workweek. But are the extra weekend winks worth it? It's a question that psychologist Torbjorn Akerstedt, director of the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University, and his colleagues tried to answer in a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Sleep Research.

Akerstedt and his colleagues grouped the 38,000 Swedes by self-reports of sleep duration. Short sleepers slept for less than five hours per night. Medium sleepers slept the typical seven hours. Long sleepers, per the new study, snoozed for nine or more hours.

The researchers further divided the groups by pairing their weekday and weekend habits. Short-short sleepers got less than five hours a night all week long. They had increased mortality rates. Long-long sleepers slept nine or more hours every night. They too had increased mortality rates.

The short-medium sleepers, on the other hand, slept less than five hours on weeknights but seven or eight hours on days off. Their mortality rates were not different from the average.

Personally, getting 9 hours seems like a luxury. But I haven't been getting 7 enough lately. I have a dream that someday I will have a full week of 7+ hour nights again. I last had this happen in January.

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