This can triple your chance of heart disease

Heart health is affected by most things you do. Your eating habits, how much you sleep, and your activity level are key factors affecting your cardiovascular health. And now a new study shows that poor sleep can significantly increase your chances of heart disease.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports and conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida, reviewed the sleep data of over 6,000 adults with an average age of 53 years. These subjects provided reports on their sleeping habits and cardiovascular history. A group of around 600 people wore a device on their wrists that recorded their rhythms more accurately.

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The researchers explained that they selected subjects who were primarily middle-aged because this subgroup tended to have more stressful life experiences. Participants were asked various questions about their health, whether they had heart problems, and whether there was a family history of cardiovascular disease. They were also asked about smoking habits, physical activity, depression and other things that could be affecting their heart health.

Researchers measured a variety of factors related to sleep, such as satisfaction, regularity, and more. They found that the more problems a person had, the more likely they were to have adverse side effects on heart health. Subjects who wore sleep monitors and reported having trouble sleeping showed a 141% increased likelihood of heart disease, tripling their likelihood of heart disease.

“These results highlight the importance of assessing ‘coexisting sleep health problems’ in an individual to assess risk of heart disease,” said lead author Soomi Lee. “This is one of the first studies to show that in midlife, more sleep problems can increase the risk of heart disease in well-functioning adults.”

“The higher estimated risk among those who provided both self-reports and actigraphy sleep data suggests that accurate and comprehensive measurement of sleep health is important to improve heart disease prediction,” he continued.

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Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, affecting over 30 million people in 2018. Studies like this can provide new parameters for the treatment and prevention of the disease, especially since sleep is a controllable factor and improves it.