Why weekend lie-ins don’t work

WEEKEND lie-ins fail to compensate for weekday sleep loss, a study has found.

People who got just five hours of shuteye a night in the week failed to make up the deficit at the weekend – despite sleeping as much as ten hours at a time.

Tests showed they missed out on more than 12 hours of weekday sleep, but managed only an extra 66 minutes of slumber at the weekend, compared to typical average sleeping times of around eight hours a night. This may be partly because long lie-ins shifted their body clocks backwards and left them struggling to sleep on a Sunday night.

The weekend sleep tactic also left people more resistant to insulin, raising the risk of type 2 diabetes.

The University of Colorado Boulder study, published in Current Biology, found consistent sleep loss was damaging regardless of weekend lie-ins.