SALT LAKE CITY, June 22 — Don't change your alarm clock for the weekend, recommends an Australian researcher. Sleeping late on Saturday and Sunday mornings may make you more tired and cranky on Monday and Tuesday.
But before he was booed off the stage at Sleep 2006, the joint meeting of the Sleep Research Society and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Leon Lack, Ph.D., of Flinders University in Adelaide backtracked a bit.
He protested that he was not attacking the traditional weekend snooze. "I just want people to realize what the consequences might be if they sleep in very late on the weekend," he said.
Those consequences, he reported, are a significantly greater level of fatigue and sleepiness on the following Monday and Tuesday. That, in turn, helps contribute to a sleep debt that isn't paid off until the weekend, he said—when people try to get back on an even keel by sleeping late.
