According to a recent study, people who sleep less than 6 hours a night may be at increased risk of developing atherosclerosis than those who sleep between 7 and 8 hours. The Progression of Early Subclinical Atherosclerosis (PESA) study involved a 7-day actigraphic recording for sleep assessment collected on 3,974 bank employees (average age of 45.8 years old and 62.6% men) in Spain. The workers were divided into four groups:
- Very short sleep duration (less than 6 hours)
- Short sleep duration (6 to 7 hours)
- Reference sleep duration (7 to 8 hours)
- Long sleep duration (more than 8 hours)
These participants also underwent 3D vascular ultrasound and cardiac CT scan to look for atherosclerosis. From the study, it was found that participants who slept less than 6 hours were 27% more likely to develop atherosclerosis.
DECIPHERING MEDICAL JARGON Atherosclerosis: A process of progressive thickening and hardening of the arterial walls as a result of fat deposits on their inner lining
Only 4% of the participants who slept more than 8 hours were found to have increased heart risk. Women who slept more than 8 hours were also linked with greater risk of atherosclerosis. Study author, Jose Ordovas reported:
It is important to emphasize that more is not always better, as oversleeping can increase cardiovascular risk.
Those with poor quality of sleep (the most waking and frequent movements during sleep), were 34% more likely to have subclinical atherosclerosis compared to those with good quality of sleep.
The researchers also found that participants with short and disrupted sleep had higher alcohol and caffeine consumption.
A prior observational research documented a robust association of both long and short habitual sleep periods with obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, stroke and death. However, those findings were limited as they rely on self-reported sleep information, which is often prone to biases and measurement errors. Another limitation was that patients with established hypertension, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes may have affected sleep duration due to the conditions and medications used.
Nevertheless, these results highlight the importance of having a good sleep hygiene for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. In addition, healthy diet and physical activities should also be adopted.
Read more on importance of sleep here.
References:
- Dominguez F, Fuster V, Fernandez-Alvira JM, Fernandez-Friera L, Lopez-Melgar B, Bianco-Rojo R, et. al. Association of sleep duration and quality with subclinical atherosclerosis. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2019 Jan 22;73(2):134-144
- Gottlieb DJ, Bhatt DL. More evidence that we could all use a good night’s sleep. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2019 Jan 22: 73(2):145-147
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