Hitting ‘snooze’ on the weekends can save your life, study suggests

Embracing lazy Sundays could be good for your health.

New research published in the journal Sleep Health suggests that sleeping in on the weekends could actually save your life in the long run.

Scientists at Nanjing Medical University in China analyzed how sleep cycles affected the health of 3,400 people.

Researchers found that an extra two hours of sleep on the weekend can reduce the chances of a heart attack or stroke by 63% — especially for people who get less than six hours of sleep during the week.

“We found that WCS [weekend catch-up sleep] in adults is associated with a low risk of angina, stroke and coronary heart disease,” the researchers wrote.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends at least seven hours of sleep per night.

Those who got less than six hours during the week and didn’t catch up on sleep on the weekends had much higher rates of cardiovascular disease.

The sleep-deprived who allowed themselves to hit snooze on their days off were two-thirds less likely to experience life-threatening medical emergencies.

Findings suggest that getting by with less sleep during the week is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as you make up for it.

However, getting too little sleep has been linked to health problems such as heart and kidney disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as an increased risk of stroke. According to the CDC, one in three adults in the US doesn’t get enough sleep.

On the other hand, a study published earlier this year suggested that getting too much sleep can actually be damaging.

Researchers found that people who sleep more than nine hours per night had an increased chance of suffering a stroke.

Regularly oversleeping has previously been linked to other health problems, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and to increased risk of death, according to Healthline.

It’s not immediately clear why too much sleep leads to an increased chance of stroke. Still, the researchers suggested it could be due to other health issues such as anemia, depression or a sedentary lifestyle.