Sleeping in on weekends: maybe not as bad as previously thought

An extra long sleep-in on the weekend offers partial short-term recovery, but it is not a sustainable solution for chronically getting too little sleep

Is there such a thing as catching up on sleep in the weekend? I’ve always assumed the answer was a firm ‘no’. But it turns out it’s a bit more nuanced. An extra long weekend sleep-in can provide partial short-term recovery: your mood improves, you feel less tired, and your cognitive performance recovers.

This is also supported by new large-scale research published in Neuropsychopharmacology. The researchers analysed over 85,000 people via the UK Biobank, one of the world’s largest health databases. They did not look at average sleep duration, but at how people actually slept, day by day and over longer periods.

No increased risk of mortality

The conclusion was striking: people who compensated for sleep deprivation with catch-up sleep did not have an increased risk of mortality. People who consistently slept too little without ever catching up did.

Sleeping in on weekends can provide temporary relief, but it is not a sustainable solution for clearing chronic sleep debt. If you only sleep five or six hours during the week because of a busy schedule, children, or an overactive mind, and then sleep ten hours straight in the weekend, the cycle of sleep deprivation starts all over again on Monday night.

That pattern is exhausting for your body, but also for your focus and mood. And it doesn’t solve the underlying problem, because if you lie awake at night while wanting to sleep, the issue is not the number of available hours, but a system that blocks sleep—rumination, physical tension; a brain and body that stay “switched on”.

That is chronic insomnia. And for that, catch-up sleep is not the answer.

Do you want to sleep better on the nights that matter? By breaking the patterns that interfere with sleep? Make a no-obligation appointment with me for an introductory meeting.

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