Instapundit links to a report of medical research on a behavior that can lead to as much as a 20% decrease in heart disease. The magical behavior: catching up on missed sleep on the weekend. The study was done with UK data as access to massive health data banks is facilitated by their NHS.
With a median follow-up of almost 14 years, participants in the group with the most compensatory sleep (quartile 4) were 19% less likely to develop heart disease than those with the least (quartile 1). In the subgroup of patients with daily sleep deprivation those with the most compensatory sleep had a 20% lower risk of developing heart disease than those with the least. The analysis did not show any differences between men and women.
I find this particularly interesting, as I tend to be a “night owl.” During my professorial years I regularly engaged in late night writing sessions followed by an 8 a.m. class. Those days I got maybe 4.5 hours sleep.
With a MWF teaching schedule I normally slept in on a Tuesday or more often a Thursday until 11 a.m. It wasn’t on a weekend but it was make-up sleep. The three years I was a bureaucrat my sleep-ins were on weekends.
My guess is that a mental disposition that “allows” a person to sleep in is related to being less stressed and maybe to lower blood pressure. More type B, less type A (I’m a B-).
