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Attempting to catch up on sleep over the weekend is insufficient to return cardiovascular health measures to normal [psu.edu]:

Whether it's work or play that prevents us from getting enough shut-eye during the week, assuming we can make up for it by sleeping in over the weekend is a mistake. New research led by Penn State reveals that cardiovascular health measures, including heart rate and blood pressure, worsen over the course of the week when sleep is restricted to five hours per night, and attempting to catch up on sleep over the weekend is insufficient to return these measures to normal.

"Only 65% of adults in the U.S. regularly sleep the recommended seven hours per night, and there's a lot of evidence suggesting that this lack of sleep is associated with cardiovascular disease in the long term," said Anne-Marie Chang, associate professor of biobehavioral health and co-author of the work, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine [lww.com]. "Our research reveals a potential mechanism for this longitudinal relationship, where enough successive hits to your cardiovascular health while you're young could make your heart more prone to cardiovascular disease in the future."

[...] Chang explained that the team's study is unique because it measured heart rate and blood pressure multiple times throughout the day for the duration of the study, which enabled them to account for any effects that time of day might have on heart rate and blood pressure. For example, heart rate is naturally lower upon waking than later in the day, so measuring heart rate multiple times throughout the day can account for this difference.

[...] "Both heart rate and systolic blood pressure increased with each successive day and did not return to baseline levels by the end of the recovery period," Reichenberger said. "So, despite having additional opportunity to rest, by the end of the weekend of the study, their cardiovascular systems still had not recovered."

Chang noted that longer periods of sleep recovery may be necessary to recover from multiple, consecutive nights of sleep loss.

"Sleep is a biological process, but it's also a behavioral one and one that we often have a lot of control over," Chang said. "Not only does sleep affect our cardiovascular health, but it also affects our weight, our mental health, our ability to focus and our ability to maintain healthy relationships with others, among many other things. As we learn more and more about the importance of sleep, and how it impacts everything in our lives, my hope is that it will become more of a focus for improving one's health."

Journal Reference:
Reichenberger, David A.; Ness, Kelly M.; Strayer, Stephen M.; et al. Recovery Sleep After Sleep Restriction Is Insufficient to Return Elevated Daytime Heart Rate and Systolic Blood Pressure to Baseline Levels. Psychosomatic Medicine 85(8):p 744-751, October 2023. | DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000001229 [doi.org]

Original Submission