Evening chronotype, insufficient weekday sleep, and weekday-weekend gap in sleep times: What is really to blame for a reduction in self-perceived health among university students?

Jun 14, 2023Chronobiology international

How Late Sleep Schedule, Short Weekday Sleep, and Weekend Sleep Differences Relate to Poorer Health in University Students

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Abstract

A survey of 1582 university students indicates that lower odds of good self-rated health are significantly associated with an earlier weekday risetime and a later weekday bedtime.

An earlier risetime and later bedtime on weekdays are linked to shorter weekday sleep duration.
Self-rated health does not significantly correlate with chronotype or differences in sleep duration between weekdays and weekends after controlling for weekday sleep.
Reduced weekday sleep has negative health impacts, independent of other sleep characteristics like nighttime sleep quality and daytime alertness.
University students report poor health perceptions related to early wakings, suggesting that interventions should focus on reducing weekday sleep loss.

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The association of insufficient sleep with reduced self-perceived health was previously well established. Moreover, it was sometimes shown that the indicators of poorer health were significantly related to chronotype and weekday-weekend gaps in sleep timing and duration. It remains to be elucidated, however, whether chronotype and these gaps can contribute to the reduced health self-ratings independently from shortened sleep duration or, alternatively, their relationship with health can be simply explained by their association with insufficient sleep on weekdays. In an online survey, we tested whether the self-rated health of university students can be predicted by several individual characteristics of the sleep-wake cycles, such as chronotype, weekday and weekend sleep times, weekday-weekend gap in sleep times, sleepability and wakeability at different times of the day, etc. Responses to a question about general health and to items of several questionnaires for chronobiological assessment were collected from smartphones of 1582 university students (mean age ± standard deviation was 19.5 ± 1.7 y). The results of regression analyses suggested that lower odds of having good self-rated health were significantly associated with an earlier weekday risetime, a later weekday bedtime, and, consequently, a shorter weekday time in bed. After accounting for weekday sleep, self-rated health showed significant association with neither chronotype nor weekday-weekend differences in sleep duration and timing. Besides, the adverse health effects of reduced weekday sleep were independent from the significant adverse effects of several other individual sleep-wake characteristics including poorer nighttime sleepability and lower daytime wakeability. We concluded that university students perceive the negative health impacts of losing sleep by waking up early on weekdays irrespective of their night sleep quality and daytime level of alertness. Their chronotype and weekday-weekend difference in sleep times might not be among significant contributors to this perception. It is of practical importance to consider the reduction of weekday sleep losses among the interventions aimed at preventing sleep and health problems.

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Evening chronotype, insufficient weekday sleep, and weekday-weekend gap in sleep times: What is really to blame for a reduction in self-perceived health among university students?

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