周末懒床有理了！

朝九晚五的上班，下班之后精疲力竭地回到家还要面对活蹦乱跳的孩子，接送他们去各种培训班，给心力交瘁的你带来希望的是周末。周末，可以约上好友出门浪，可以准时看到没品笑话，更重要的是在周末可以睡到自!然!醒!充足的睡眠对我们的健康和生活质量至关重要。最近的一项研究表明，在周末多睡一会甚至可以让你活得更长。

Torbojorn Akerstedt, a professor and director of the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University, and co-author of the study which is published in in the Journal of Sleep Research told CNN that he was “quite surprised by what researchers found when they focused on that block of time.” Researchers set out to look at what happens when people have days off and decide to sleep more with those days off.

Torbojorn Akerstedt是斯德哥尔摩大学压力研究所的教授和主任，也是发表在《睡眠研究》杂志上的这项研究的共同作者，他告诉美国有线电视新闻网，他对研究人员在关注这一段时间时发现的东西感到惊讶。“研究人员着手研究在休息日多睡一会儿能带来怎么样的变化。

To conduct the study, researchers looked at almost 44,000 people in Sweden and questioned them about their sleeping habits and followed up with them 13 years later. They found that people who slept about five hours or less a night, which included weekends, increased their mortality rate compared to those who slept for seven hours regularly. In addition, they found that participants who slept too much also had an increased mortality rate.

为了进行这项研究，研究人员调查了近44000名瑞典人的睡眠习惯，并且在13年后对他们进行了回访。他们发现，与经常睡7小时的人相比，每晚睡眠时间不超过5小时的人死亡率更高，而且，睡眠过多也会增加死亡率。

Now, when researchers took a look at those who slept less during the week and more on the weekend, they found that the mortality rate was almost the same as those who slept for seven hours regularly. This was only true for those who were under the age of 65. To add to the study, Michael Grander, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, told CNN: “Most people who are considered “short sleepers” are probably just shy of getting seven hours. They might sleep six hours or slightly less. They are the ones who can compensate with longer rest on the weekends, because there is not as much of a deficit. Sleep is something you need to replenish regularly if you don’t want to hurt your health. It’s a fundamental part of our biology, like breathing. It’s a requirement.”

现在，研究人员在调查那些周内睡眠时间较短，而周末会补上一个好觉的人。他们发现死亡率几乎和每天睡7小时的人相同。不过，这个现象只适用于65岁以下的人。大多数所谓的睡眠不足的人，可能平日里只能睡到6小时或者更短，这类人需要在周末或者其它不会被打扰的日子里多睡一会。如果不想伤害自己的健康，那么人们需要给自己更多的时间补充睡眠。

So you’re probably wondering what this means for you. In the past, sleep experts have advised against trying to catch up on sleep on the weekends, reported Men’s Health. Sleep scientist Matthew Walker spoke to NPR well before this study was conducted and he explained to them that sleep is not like a bank, “You can’t accumulate a debt and pay it off at a later point in time. If I were to deprive you of sleep an entire night, and then in a subsequent night give you all the sleep you want, you never get back all that you’ve lost.” But this recent study can now change that way of thinking. Authors from the study explain that the results imply that short sleep during the week is not a risk factor of mortality if you combine it with medium or long periods of sleeping on the weekend, reported Men’s Health.

在过去，睡眠专家的建议是，不要在周末补觉，他们给出的解释是，睡眠不是银行，欠下的睡眠时间是补不回来的。但是现在这项研究能够反驳这种说法，如果周末可以有足够的睡眠时间，那么周内偶尔的睡不够是不会对健康造成严重影响的。

According to a study published on PubMed, consuming caffeine up to six hours before bed can disrupt your sleep. For the study, participants were given 400 mg of caffeine either at 0, 3 or 6 hours prior to their bedtime. Researchers used a sleep monitor to keep track of sleep disturbances. Results showed that a moderate dose of caffeine 3 or 6 hours before bedtime had significant sleep disturbances compared to the placebo group.

根绝PubMed上的一项研究，睡前六小时摄入咖啡因会扰乱你的睡眠，研究人员在睡前3小时和6小时分别给受试者摄入400mg的咖啡因。并且用睡眠监测器来跟踪受试者的睡眠。结果显示，与安慰剂组相比，在睡前3或6小时摄入咖啡因会造成明显的睡眠障碍。

Nighttime melatonin plays an essential role in the body’s circadian rhythm. If you are unfamiliar with what the circadian rhythm is, in basic terms, it’s the body’s internal clock. With that said, a study was published on PubMed that wanted to see if ethanol (alcohol) has the ability to inhibit nocturnal melatonin. So researchers administered an ethanol dose of 0.34g/kg orally at 6pm, 8pm and 10pm for group A. For group B and C, the dose was increased to 0.52g/kg but ethanol was substituted with water. Researchers found that when they increased the ethanol dose, it inhibited nocturnal melatonin by 20% where the lower dose did not show any effect.

影响人体生物钟的物质是褪黑素，褪黑素会促进我们入睡。有研究想要探究酒精是否会在夜间抑制褪黑素的分泌。因此，研究人员在下午6点、晚上8点和10点给受试者喂服不同剂量的酒精。研究人员发现，较低剂量的酒精不会对睡眠造成影响，而剂量变大会使褪黑素在夜间的分泌被抑制20%。