One Sleep Habit Could Boost Your Heart Health, Study Suggests

While the researchers controlled for factors including blood pressure, gender, and exercise, cause and effect can’t be proven here – only a notable association.

The researchers think that the natural 24-hour cycles that our bodies go through – our circadian rhythms – might help to explain some of this association. Changing bedtimes every night is likely to confuse and disrupt these rhythms, which in turn means the heart doesn’t have proper rest and recovery periods.

Real-world stress could also be playing a significant role, the new study acknowledges. Challenges in day-to-day life that affect sleep times – such as workload or mental health issues – will also often affect heart health too.

“Previous research has linked irregular sleep patterns to heart health risks, but this is the first time we’ve looked separately at variability in bedtime, wake-up time, and the midpoint of the sleep period – and their independent associations with major cardiac events,” says Nauha.

For this study, major cardiovascular events were defined as conditions that need specialized medical care, including myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) and strokes.

It’s also important to put the research in context. Out of the more than 3,000 participants, 128 suffered an event like this over the 10-year study period, so we’re talking about a relatively low number overall.

What’s more, sleep was only tracked for seven days, and routines may not necessarily have stayed the same for all participants.

That said, cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of death globally, responsible for almost 18 million fatalities a year at the last count. This is clearly a health issue where interventions are badly needed.

The researchers are keen to see further studies looking at this bedtime relationship in more detail, and across larger and more diverse groups of people, not least because bedtime is something that many of us have some degree of control over.

There’s a growing pile of evidence linking sleep quality and routine to a whole host of health consequences, and we also know that a lot of these connections – like sleep and exercise – work both ways. The findings here give us another goal to aim at in terms of optimizing our overall sleep health.

“Maintaining a regular sleep schedule is one factor that most of us can influence,” says Nauha.