Gregory Carter from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre said that sleeping even an hour later than usual on Saturday and Sunday disrupts the body's internal clock.
This is because it makes it harder to get to sleep on Sunday night, and as a result more difficult to get up the following day, the Daily Mail reported.
"A great myth of sleep deprivation is that if we miss sleep over the course of the working week, we need to catch up on an hour-by-hour basis on the weekend," Carter said.
Any 'sleep debt' from the working week can be balanced out by just spending eight hours in bed, he added.
"To maintain our internal clock, we need to go to bed eight hours before our usual time for getting out of bed in the morning," Carter said.
"This pattern - combined with sleep-defeating actions that may include alcohol consumption and late-night checking of emails just prior to bedtime