That triathlete neighbor of yours? The one who shows up to the block party with tales of 5 a.m. wake-ups and a mud-strewn bib on?
Might not be as healthy as he thinks.
According to a recently published joint study from Swedish and American clinicians for the Journal of Sleep Research, the ideal sleeping pattern to avoid negatively affecting one’s mortality rate involves a weekday slate of 6-to-7 hour snoozes followed by a weekend of longer, more replenishing sleep.
Following a cohort of nearly 44K subjects over a 13-year period, Sweden’s Karolinska Institute determined that people under 65 who caught less than or equal to five hours of sleep on the weekend experience a 52% higher mortality rate than those who make sure to sleep for nine or more hours.
Translation? Continue to do what you’ve been doing. Sleeping for nine hours during the week is tough (the study also found consistent weekday and weekend sleep over nine hours is not a good idea), but who doesn’t love a nice lazy Sunday?
Just don’t follow it up with a plate of waffles and bacon. Can’t lose too much of an edge to Mr. Ironman.
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