According to a new study, irregular sleep cycles can lead to increased chances of a heart attack and heart diseases.
At some point in our lives, we have all been guilty of disrupting our sleep schedules for various reasons. While some of us are just night owls, others end up staying awake for long hours caught up in work.
Well, a new study has found that not sticking to your regular sleep cycle can increase your chance of a heart attack or having heart disease. According to the new study, if a person disrupts their sleep schedule by 90 minutes it can lead to an increased chance of getting cardiovascular diseases.
The study said that a regular sleep pattern can have a time difference of less than 30 minutes on an average of seven nights.
The study also suggested, the symptoms remained even after steps to control cholesterol, blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factors were undertaken.
The author of the study, Tianyi Huang, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School said, “Compared with people who had the most regular sleep time to those with the most irregular sleep time – more than a 90 minute difference on average across seven nights – had more than a two-fold increased risk of cardiovascular disease over a 5-year period.”
“Messing with our internal sleep clock has been linked to cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension, insulin resistance or diabetes, but this is the first study to link an irregular sleep pattern with cardiovascular disease,” Huang said.
They also said that frequent variations in sleep patterns can be a “novel and independent cardiovascular risk factor.”
The study monitored more than 2,000 people between the ages of 45 to 84 without any cardiovascular disease over a five-year period.
“This sleep irregularity may be even more common among younger people. Younger people may have more demands from study and from work, and those may also influence whether they can have a regular sleep pattern or not,” Huang said.
“The more you sleep irregularly, the higher the risk you have,” Huang added.
