Weekend catch-up sleep (WCS) was negatively correlated with both the distribution and severity of overactive bladder (OAB), with a U-shaped dose-response relationship and a turning point at 1.5 hours, suggesting that restricting WCS duration to within 1.5 hours may be linked to a lower prevalence of OAB.
Key Findings
Results
Both the distribution and severity of OAB were negatively correlated with weekend catch-up sleep in multivariate regression models.
Data were drawn from the 2017–2018 cycle of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database.
The study involved 4,195 participants, of whom 997 were diagnosed with OAB.
Three models with progressively adjusted covariates were constructed to assess the association between WCS and OAB distribution and severity.
The negative correlation held for both OAB prevalence (distribution) and symptom severity as separate outcomes.
Results
A U-shaped relationship was found between WCS duration and OAB distribution, with OAB risk initially decreasing then increasing as WCS duration grew.
The U-shaped dose-response relationship was identified using restricted cubic splines (RCS) modeling.
The relationship showed an initial decrease in OAB risk followed by an increase with longer WCS duration.
A threshold effect analysis was subsequently applied to precisely identify the inflection point of this nonlinear relationship.
This nonlinear pattern suggests that the protective effect of WCS is not uniformly sustained across all durations.
Results
The turning point of the U-shaped relationship between WCS duration and OAB risk occurred at 1.5 hours.
Threshold effect analysis identified 1.5 hours as the inflection point in the WCS–OAB dose-response curve.
Restricting WCS duration to within 1.5 hours was associated with a lower prevalence of OAB.
Beyond 1.5 hours of WCS, the protective association diminished and OAB risk began to increase.
The authors describe this threshold as a clinically meaningful boundary for the potential benefit of WCS.
Results
Subgroup and interaction analyses showed interactions were observed, but results remained robust across subgroups.
Subgroup analyses were conducted to assess the stability of the WCS–OAB association across different population groups.
Although statistically significant interactions were observed in some subgroups, the overall direction and significance of the association remained consistent.
The authors characterized the results as 'robust' despite the presence of interactions.
Specific subgroup variables and interaction p-values were not detailed in the abstract.
Conclusions
The study identified weekend catch-up sleep as a potentially modifiable behavior associated with reduced OAB risk and symptom severity.
WCS has emerged as a new research focus in the field of sleep research.
Prior research had established a relationship between sleep and OAB, but the specific connection between WCS and OAB had not previously been reported.
The authors describe WCS as a 'simple and feasible approach' that 'holds promise in alleviating the public health burden associated with OAB.'
Moderate WCS (within 1.5 hours) was highlighted as the potentially beneficial range.
What This Means
This research suggests that sleeping extra hours on weekends to make up for weekday sleep loss — known as 'weekend catch-up sleep' (WCS) — may be associated with a lower risk of overactive bladder (OAB), a condition involving a frequent and urgent need to urinate. Using data from nearly 4,200 U.S. adults surveyed in 2017–2018, the researchers found that people who got more weekend catch-up sleep were less likely to have OAB and, among those who did have it, tended to have less severe symptoms.
However, the relationship between WCS and OAB was not simply 'more is better.' The study found a U-shaped pattern: OAB risk decreased as WCS duration increased up to about 1.5 hours, but then risk began to climb again with longer amounts of catch-up sleep. This suggests there may be an optimal window of weekend catch-up sleep, and that sleeping in for too long on weekends might not provide additional protection and could potentially be counterproductive.
This research matters because OAB affects millions of people and significantly impacts quality of life, while weekend catch-up sleep is a low-cost, accessible behavior. If future studies confirm these findings, moderate weekend catch-up sleep — capped around 1.5 hours — could represent a practical, non-pharmaceutical way to help reduce OAB risk at a population level. As an observational study using survey data, however, it cannot prove that WCS directly causes a reduction in OAB, and other factors may explain the association.
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Li Z, Liu X, Chen X, Li F, Xing W, Tian H, et al.. (2026). Unraveling the protective effect of weekend catch-up sleep on overactive bladder risk.. Annals of medicine. https://doi.org/10.1080/07853890.2026.2702805