(WASHINGTONPOST) — Did you try to catch up on sleep this weekend? You’re not alone. More than one third of American adults report getting less than 7 hours of sleep on weekdays, and many of them try to sleep extra-long on weekends to make up for it.
This isn’t a particularly healthy way to live — insufficient sleep is associated with obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a host of other physical ailments. Drowsy driving causes around 80,000 automobile accidents every year, 1,000 of which are typically fatal.
The simple reason for shortchanging sleep on the weekdays? Work. A team of researchers examined nearly 125,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey to calculate two things: first, how much sleep we’re getting, and second, what we’re doing instead of sleeping.
