The alarm clock has trouble waking you from sleep and you often get tired at work? Perhaps you are suffering from too much of a gap between your need for biological sleep and your imposed weekly schedule. A phenomenon qualified by researchers as “social jet lag”. “On weekdays, people do not get enough sleep and are woken up by the alarm clock when they have not finished their night in the biological sense. So they tend to compensate for this lack by sleeping a lot on weekends. “, explains Till Roennenberg of the University of Munich. Problem: this social jet lag is not without risk for health. This difference between the biological rhythm known as biorhythm and the social rhythm, dictated by the ringing of the alarm clock, would promote obesity.
After observing sleep patterns in 65,000 adults, Prof. Roennenberg’s team found that people whose sleep patterns diverged too much between weekdays and weekends were three times more at risk of being overweight than those with a very regular sleep pattern. “The greater the difference between the hours of sleep on weekends and the week, the more you risk getting fat,” summarizes Till Roennenberg of the University of Munich, author of the study.
Disrupting the biorhythm increases the risk of depression
Several studies have pointed out the health dangers of sleep deprivation: an American study recently showed that night workers who sleep little and at the wrong time of the day increase their risk of diabetes and being obese.
Shifting your natural rhythm makes you much more vulnerable to the risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease and depression. “People who work at night or who have shifted sleep schedules are particularly concerned,” explained Dr. Marc Schwob, psychiatrist and neurobiologist in a previous article.
>> To read also: Do you know your biorhythms?
>> To read also: Sleep: 5 signs that show that you are really lacking
