People with a genetic risk of having heart disease can help protect themselves by getting the right amount of sleep, as too much or too little sleep can people people at risk for a heart attack.
Health experts have long touted the benefits of getting a good night’s sleep.
Get around 8 hours of Zzz’s a night and you’ll likely experience improved concentration and productivity. Sleep can also boost your immune system, athletic performance, and mood.
Despite all the benefits,
Recent research found that getting too little — or too much—sleep can boost your risk of heart attack, even if you’re healthy.
Additionally, everyone, including people who have a genetic predisposition for heart disease, can mitigate the risk of heart attack by getting about six to nine hours of sleep a night, according to 2019 research.
This provides some of the strongest research to date that sleep duration is a key factor in regards to heart health, according to the researchers.
“If someone is looking to optimize their lifestyle, our data suggest that we should also strongly consider whether they are sleeping enough, or too long, as our findings support that these are key lifestyle risk factors contributing to heart health. And this is true in everybody, independent of their risk profile,” senior author Céline Vetter, an assistant professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Healthline.
Research from 2018 studying over 60,000 adults found that individuals who slept less than six hours per night had a significantly higher risk of developing coronary heart disease.
Poor sleep quality, such as experiencing dreamy sleep or difficulty falling asleep, was also linked to increased heart disease risk.
While those who slept more than eight hours showed a slight increase in risk, the association was not statistically significant in this study.
In contrast, a much larger meta-analysis of over 5 million participants found that long sleep duration was significantly associated with higher risks of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and mortality.
This study demonstrated that as sleep duration increases beyond the normal range, so does the risk of adverse health outcomes.
Together, these two studies highlight the importance of both sleep quality and duration, as too little or too much sleep may contribute to cardiovascular risk.
While we don’t know the exact reason why sleep lowers the risk of heart attack, it’s well known that sleep is vital for our overall health and well-being.
Healthy sleep habits are linked to better performance, mood, learning, and memory. Poor sleep, on the other hand, can disrupt the body’s systems and significantly harm heart health.
“Not sleeping enough can result in metabolic abnormalities (e.g. obesity), inflammation, stress, changes in immune function, and abnormal function of the lining of blood vessels. These can further increase the risk of having a heart attack in those already genetically predisposed to heart disease,” says Dr. Meir Kryger, a sleep expert and pulmonologist with Yale Medicine.
This can be extremely helpful information for anyone with a genetic predisposition for heart disease, as they can significantly reduce their heart attack risk by prioritizing sleep.
Granted, not everybody has the easiest time falling asleep. Some people live with anxiety or insomnia, while others face difficulty sleeping due to old age or restless newborns.
Chronic, continuous sleep disturbances can lead to serious health issues and exacerbate existing ones, especially those related to the heart.
“The heart is a motor that pumps 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and requires down time, just like a car engine that would burn out if it ran 24/7,” says Dr. Guy Mintz, the director of cardiovascular health and lipidology of cardiology at Northwell Health’s North Shore University Hospital.
Of course, everyone’s sleep needs differ. Where one person may only need 7 hours of sleep, another may require about 9 hours a night.
Those who struggle with sleep on a regular basis should speak with a sleep expert. They can help you understand where the sleep problem is coming from and suggest possible remedies.
For example, cognitive behavioral therapy can help alleviate insomnia, Vetter said. In addition, sometimes lifestyle and the timing of certain behaviors, such as workouts along with caffeine, food, and alcohol intake, can cause disrupted sleep.
Many health experts recommend keeping a sleep journal in which a person logs their daily sleep patterns. They can help identify any habits or factors that may be keeping people from getting the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night.
Overall, everyone, whether at genetic risk for heart disease or not, can do their hearts a favor by prioritizing sleep.
“Proper rest is important at any age and life milestone,” Mintz said.
Research suggests that both insufficient and excessive sleep, along with low sleep quality, are linked to an increased risk of heart disease.
Maintaining consistent, high quality sleep within a healthy duration (generally, 7 to 8 hours per night) is an important and often overlooked factor in protecting cardiovascular health.