- Preventing heart disease takes a multi-faceted approach.
- Perhaps lesser discussed than diet and exercise as interventions is getting proper sleep.
- A new study looks at how a person’s bedtime impacts their heart disease risk. Experts weigh in.
You probably know that a heart-healthy diet and regular exercise can make big strides in lowering heart disease risk. What may be lesser considered as a channel to heart health is sleep. And it’s not just getting it that matters—the time one falls asleep appears to play a part in how well a person’s heart works, or doesn’t.
Meet the Experts: John La Puma, M.D., board-certified internist and sleep specialist; and Srihari Naidu, M.D., cardiologist and professor of medicine at New York Medical College.
A new study published in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders looked at how bedtime inconsistency impacted middle aged peoples’ risk of experiencing a heart attack, stroke, heart failure, or cardiovascular-related death over a 10 year period compared to those who went to bed at roughly the same time nightly. The findings were alarming, and not the kind you can snooze. Below, doctors weigh in on the findings.
What did the study find?
Researchers followed 3,231 Finnish adults, all born in 1966, each of whom wore a research-grade wrist sleep monitor for seven days that tracked when they fell asleep, when they woke, and the midpoint of their sleep period. After 10 years, researchers cross referenced participant data with Finland’s national health registry for heart attacks, strokes, heart failure hospitalizations, and cardiovascular deaths.
With that data, researchers organized participants into three groups: those who had a regular bedtime, those who had a fairly regular bedtime (meaning, they fell asleep within an hour of the same time nightly), and those who had an irregular bedtime (meaning, they fell asleep within nearly two hours of the same time nightly). Even after researchers controlled for standard age and sex-related cardiac risk factors, those with irregular bedtimes showed a doubled risk of heart disease compared to their counterparts.
Surprisingly, this risk was predicted only by irregular bedtimes—irregular wakeup times didn’t have the same effect. “And the risk was concentrated in people sleeping under eight hours, suggesting that short sleepers with erratic bedtimes get hit twice,” explains John La Puma, M.D., board-certified internist and sleep specialist.
Why is bedtime consistency important—for heart health and overall wellness?
These finding indicates that not only sleep length and quality, but sleep time matters for heart health. Why? “Your body’s master clock is a cluster of about 20,000 nerve cells in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus,” says Dr. La Puma. “It orchestrates a nightly sequence of repair events timed to when you fall asleep. Blood pressure dips. Cortisol clears. Heart rate slows. Blood vessels repair. When your bedtime jumps around by an hour or two from night to night, you’re giving your heart jet lag.”
When you think about it that way, it makes sense. Also, if you struggle to fall asleep at consistent times due to stress, for example, you may build up more total body inflammation over time, which contributes to heart disease risk—specifically, it may tick up factors like hypertension and obesity, adds Srihari Naidu, M.D., cardiologist and professor of medicine at New York Medical College.
It’s worth noting that the American Heart Association recently added sleep regularity to its list of essential components for heart health, alongside diet, exercise, and not smoking, says Dr. La Puma.
The bottom line
The main takeaway here is that a bedtime and general sleep hygiene is important—even sacred. “Build a bedtime routine and protect it,” says Dr. La Puma. “I recommend a wind down ritual an hour before you want to be asleep. That includes dimming the lights, not having a blue light screens, and a cup of chamomile tea or an analog book or soft music.”
If you struggle to sleep, see a doctor—many sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, are treatable, and getting them checked out can ultimately improve your quality of life and heart disease risk, says Dr Naidu.
“We oftentimes forget sleep is there for a reason, and that we should treat that time as important,” says Dr. Naidu. “Just because we can’t remember it doesn’t mean nothing is happening during that time. And as it turns out what is happening is quite important over the long term.” He recommends shooting for a bedtime between 10 and midnight or earlier, sticking to that time, and getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night.
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