The new study, presented at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, looked at data from over 90,000 people in the UK. Of those, nearly 20,000 were classed as being sleep-deprived (getting under seven hours of rest a night). Over a 14-year period, researchers found that those who slept in at the weekends were 19% less likely to develop heart disease than those who didn’t get any extra kip.

It’s worth noting that the range of extra sleep participants got at the weekend was huge. Some had an extra 90 minutes, while others slept a whopping 16 hours more. And in extreme cases, some participants lost over 16 hours of sleep at the weekend.

It’s no surprise that catching up on rest if you’re chronically sleep-deprived might offer some health benefits, especially when you consider that shift work is thought to increase the risk of heart attack due to a conflict between biological clocks and work hours.

Sleeping in at the weekend might improve your heart health, according to a huge new study