In a study from Vanderbilt University, scientists found older adults with irregular sleep habits may face a higher risk for hardened arteries than their peers with regular bedtimes and hours of sleep.
They found adults 45 and older who fell asleep at different times each night and slept an inconsistent number of hours were more likely to develop atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque in artery walls that can lead to a heart attack or stroke.
Prior research has linked poor sleep habits – including getting too little, too much or fragmented sleep – with heart disease, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and other cardiovascular disease conditions.
The American Heart Association recommends adults get seven to nine hours of sleep each night.
The AHA recently added sleep to Life’s Essential 8, its list of recommended behaviors and factors for optimizing heart and brain health.
In this study, researchers analyzed the sleep habits of more than 2,000 men and women, with an average age of 69, who were enrolled in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis between 2010 and 2013.
Participants were free of cardiovascular disease when the sleep ancillary study began.
Sleep duration was measured by the total amount of time spent in bed fully asleep. The researchers also tracked the time participants fell asleep each night.
The team found that compared to participants with consistent sleep duration, those whose sleep duration varied by more than two hours within the same week were 1.4 times more likely to have high levels of coronary artery calcium, a major contributor to cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes.
They also were 1.12 times more likely to have carotid plaque and nearly two times more likely to have abnormal results from an ankle-brachial index, which compares blood pressure at the ankle and in the arm to test for atherosclerosis and stiffness in the blood vessels.
Participants whose bedtimes varied by more than 90 minutes within the same week were 1.43 times more likely to have high coronary artery calcium, compared to those whose bedtimes varied by 30 minutes or less.
The team says maintaining regular sleep schedules and decreasing variability in sleep is an easily adjustable lifestyle behavior that can not only help improve sleep but also help reduce heart disease risk for aging adults.
If you care about sleep, please read studies about meds that could help treat sleep loss and insomnia, and move around a lot while you sleep? It might be bad to your heart.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about more coffee linked to heart rhythm disease, and results showing coconut sugar could help reduce artery stiffness.
The study was conducted by Kelsie Full et al and published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
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