Published on
Updated
Reading 2 mins.
Sleep is essential for good health, everyone knows that. And according to the results of a study, it is also essential for good heart health. So much so that scientists now want to consider it as a cardiovascular risk factor.
The American Heart Association has a list of seven criteria for evaluating a person’s good cardiovascular health. These are also seven tips that help preserve your heart health. This list includes:
- quitting smoking;
- Eating better;
- Staying active and exercising;
- Losing weight;
- Controlling blood pressure;
- Controlling your cholesterol level;
- Reducing hyperglycaemia (increased blood sugar levels);
An eighth recommendation has now been added to this list: quality sleep.
Participant sleep study
The study that leads to this conclusion was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. It was carried out on 2,000 volunteers who participated in a sleep examination and provided comprehensive data on their sleep characteristics.
Overall, the study found that 63% of participants slept less than 7 hours per night and 30% slept less than 6 hours. Regarding sleep quality, 14% reported having excessive daytime sleepiness and 36% high insomnia symptoms. Finally, 47% suffered from moderate to severe sleep apnea, where breathing repeatedly stops and starts again.
At least seven hours but not more than nine
For researchers, sleeping 7 hours or more but less than 9 hours each night was considered an indicator of ideal sleep health. They also noticed that people who sleep less than seven hours a night have an increased risk of heart disease risk issues, including type 2 diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.
For Nour Makarem, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and lead author of the study, their findings “emphasize the importance of taking a holistic view of sleep health that includes widespread sleep behaviors and mild sleep problems rather than focusing strictly on sleep disorders when assessing cardiovascular risk for an individual“.