Study: Sleeping in on the weekend may lower the risk of heart disease

Now you have a new excuse to hit the snooze button on the weekends.

New research finds that people who catch zzz’s on the weekend can lower their risk of heart disease by up to 20%.

“Sufficient compensatory sleep is associated with a lower risk of heart disease,” said study co-author Yanjun Song, a researcher at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing. “The association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience insufficient sleep on weekdays.”

Song’s team analyzed sleep data from 90,900 UK residents. Nearly 22% – about 19,800 participants – were categorized as sleep deprived because they slept an average of less than seven hours a night.

The researchers followed the participants for nearly 14 years, monitoring hospital and death records for heart disease, including heart failure, atrial fibrillation and stroke.

The team found that those who got the most restful sleep were 19% less likely to develop heart disease.

Among the sleep-deprived participants, higher amounts of compensatory sleep meant a 20% lower risk of heart disease.

The data revealed no differences between men and women.

Dr. Nisha Parikh, director of the Women’s Heart Program for Northwell Health’s Cardiovascular Institute and the Katz Institute for Women’s Health, called the study a “well-done analysis.”

“Sleep disorders including sleep deprivation have been linked to cardiometabolic diseases, including hypertension, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease,” Parikh told The Post. “It is reassuring that full weekend sleep can at least partially mitigate the effects of weekday sleep deprivation.”

The research was presented on Thursday at the annual conference of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

“Our results show that for a significant portion of the population in modern society that suffers from sleep deprivation, those who get more ‘full’ sleep at the weekend have significantly lower rates of heart disease than those with less,” said author Zechen Liu.

However, experts recommend that adults get seven to nine hours of sleep each night so they don’t find themselves in sleep debt.

Also Thursday at the ESC Congress, researchers from Denmark presented their work that found that women with endometriosis face a 20% greater risk of heart attack and stroke compared to women without endometriosis.

The painful condition, which affects more than 6.5 million American women, occurs when tissue similar to the endometrium grows outside the uterus.

Meanwhile, men with coronary artery disease — the most common type of heart disease in the U.S. — can cut their risk of a major heart attack by nearly half by quitting smoking for good.

Simply reducing cigarettes is not enough to move the needle, the study’s authors said from Paris at the ESC Congress.