The ringing of the alarm clock has trouble rousing you from sleep and you are often tired at work? Perhaps you suffer from too great a gap between your biological need for sleep and your imposed rhythm of the week. A phenomenon described by researchers as “social jet lag”. “During the week, 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 gap between the biological rhythm called biorhythm and the social rhythm, dictated by the ringing of the alarm clock, would promote obesity.
After observing sleep patterns in 65,000 adults, Professor 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 regular sleep pattern. “The greater the gap between the hours of sleep on weekends and during the week, the more we 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 to the health dangers of sleep deprivation: an American study recently showed that night workers who sleep little and at the wrong time of day increase their risk of diabetes and being obese.
Disrupting 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 staggered sleep schedules are particularly concerned, explained Dr. Marc Schwob, psychiatrist and neurobiologist in a previous article”.
>>Also read: Do you know your biorhythms?
>> To read also: Sleep: 5 signs that show that you are really lacking
