Life gets stressful, especially during the work week. You know what you should be doing to maintain your health and energy levels, but sometimes you prioritize other things over eating right, exercising, and sleeping enough. Is it possible to compensate for the lack of sleep once the weekend comes?
It’s commonly recommended that you should get 7-8 hours of sleep every night. But if you don’t manage to get that from Monday to Friday, you may feel the need to make up for it by sleeping more during the weekend.
A study conducted at Stockholm University by psychologist Torbjorn Akerstedt and his colleagues lasted for 13 years and tracked over 38,000 people with a focus on their sleeping habits during weekdays and weekends. They found that, though it’s not a perfect solution, “it seems that weekend compensation is good.” It’s better to make up for the lost sleep hours during weekends than to not do it at all, although it’s still the best to have a regular sleep schedule for every day of the week.
