You might get to sleep in on the weekends but is it the best sleep? According to new research, the answer is no.
Analytics company Firstbeat, headquartered in Jyväskylä, Finland, collected data from heart monitors worn by 4,866 British participants around the clock for three consecutive days over the last 10 years. They found Britons enjoy their best sleep on Tuesday nights.
While it’s not the longest sleep of the week (weekends usually mean an extra 30 minutes in bed on Friday and Saturday nights), Tuesday night sleep is the most restorative, with a fall in blood pressure and stress hormones, according to a June 28 article in The Telegraph.
While experts aren’t exactly sure why this is the case, it could be that Tuesday nights are free from the rich food and drinks consumed over the weekend.
“People rest for a lot longer during the weekend, but perhaps they are out partying and letting their hair down and their bodies don’t physiologically recover,” says Simon Shepard, chief executive officer of Optima-Life, the U.K.-based distributor of the heart monitors used in the study. “On Mondays and Tuesdays, your energy levels may still be high after the weekend. And while you may still be sociable, you may be sociable in a different way, going to a book group rather than the pub.”
The study found only 48% of Saturday night and 48.7% of Friday night’s sleep revitalizes the body and brain. This is compared with a high of 55.1% on Tuesday nights, while 54.6% of sleep on Monday was considered to be restorative, the article notes.
