It’s healthy to sleep in on the weekends, according to research

Sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday could help people live longer if they aren’t getting enough sleep during the week, according to a new research.

The study, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, followed over 43,000 subjects for 13 years on their sleep habits and overall mortality. For people younger than 65 years old, shorter sleep on the weekdays and weekends led to earlier mortality.

Researchers from the U.S. and Sweden analyzed combinations of number of hours of sleep and found that people who get between six and seven hours of sleep consistently throughout the week were not associated with having higher mortality.

The same observation was found in a group of individuals who slept less than five hours during the week, but got greater than eight hours of sleep on the weekends.

“Possibly, long weekend sleep may compensate for short weekday sleep,” the authors wrote.

Sleeping longer all the time, more than or equal to eight hours, wasn’t beneficial and was associated with an increased risk for early death by as much as 52 percent.

Getting less than five hours of sleep all week was also associated with higher mortality rates.