Sleeping in on the weekends could help you live longer

Raise your hand if you try to “catch up” on sleep on the weekends? Yep, us, too. And while you normally feel a little guilty about those ten-hour binges, new research has revealed that you may actually be on to something.

According to a recent study published in the Journal of Sleep Research, enjoying some extra shut-eye over the weekend could counteract the damaging effects of getting too little sleep during the week.

Here’s the deal: Researchers looked at data from more than 30,000 people over a period of 13 years. What they found was that adults under the age of 65 who get five hours or less of sleep for seven days a week have an increased risk of death (a staggering 65 percent higher) than those who consistently get six or seven hours of shut-eye. But those who clocked in just a few hours of sleep each day during the week with a long snooze on the weekends had no raised mortality risk.

Before you give yourself permission to sleep in every day, know that researchers also found that those who slept for eight hours or more, seven days a week, had a 25 percent higher mortality rate compared with the six or seven hours a day sleep group.

But a few extra winks this weekend? Yep, totally OK.