Sleep is very important, that is a fact. However,even if you sleep for the required or recommended hours and your sleep schedule is off, it is still considered to be unhealthy. This practice may bring some problems in your cardiovascular health. Insufficient or irregular sleep pattern affects human health from one’s mental to physical ability to go about his or her everyday life.
Authors of a study done at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusettes on regular and irregular sleep patterns have recorded their findings in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study shows that for those with erratic sleep patterns, they are more likely to experience cardiovascular risks than those with regular sleep practices. The authors were headed by Tianyi Huang and Huang says that we are used to always thinking about the hours of our sleeping time and we don’t usually consider the quality of that sleep time. Addressing cardiovascular issues such as strokes and heart attacks should not be focused only on diet and lifestyle or exercise. The quality of sleep should be counted in, too.
The participants were between the ages of 60-80 years old and were African American, Chinese American, and other various ethnicities. Researches also have their health information for the past 4 years and 9 months. Approximately 111 out of the 1,992 participants experienced. All 1,992 of them wore a unit called “actigraph” for seven days and this made it possible for the research team to outline their sleeping pattern such as what time they would go to sleep, for how long and what time they would wake up.
The research did not provide them enough time to do some follow up that could further establish more information in linking cardiovascular risks to sleep patterns. The number of people observed was also relatively small. There was also an observation in the study about the fact that those who had a difference of two or more hours of erratic sleep patterns were twice at the risk of having cardiovascular problems compared to those who experienced a difference of just about one hour or less.
Adjustments were also made for other cardiovascular risk factors but this was not enough to establish a link between cardiovascular factors and irregularity of sleeping patterns. The research leader Mr. Huang hopes to further explore possibilities that establishing consistency in a person’s sleeping pattern can help lessen future cardiovascular problems or risks. The research team shares the same view, too.
Sleep plays a crucial role in each person’s health as it is the only time when the body is able to regenerate or replenish some of the damaged cells. Getting the right amount of rest by sleeping decreases risks of coronary and cardiovascular diseases, no matter the age, lifestyle or habits, and weight is.
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