Having an irregular sleep cycle can increase your risk of serious cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, according to a new study published on Tuesday (26). The risk remains high even in those people who get the recommended hours of sleep per night.
The research, published in Journal of Epidemiology & Community Healthevaluates the impact of irregular sleep — such as having different times to sleep and wake up throughout the day — on cardiovascular health. To do this, researchers interviewed 72,269 people aged between 40 and 79 who participated in the UK Biobank study and who had no history of serious cardiovascular events.
Participants wore an activity tracker for seven days to record their sleep, and the data was used to calculate their Sleep Regularity Index (SIR) score. People with an IRS score greater than 87 were considered to have a regular sleep pattern, while those with a score lower than 72 were considered to have an irregular sleep pattern. Participants who scored values between this range were considered “moderately irregular”.
Over the next eight years, data on cardiovascular death, heart attack, heart failure and stroke were collected from hospital records and death records. With this, the risks of these events were calculated for each sleep pattern group.
The researchers took into account factors that could influence the risk of cardiovascular complications, such as age, physical activity levels, screen time, fruit, vegetable and coffee intake, alcohol consumption, smoking, mental health problems, medication use and shift work.
After that, the authors identified that people with irregular sleep were 26% more likely to have a serious cardiovascular event compared to those who had a regular sleep pattern. Participants in the “moderately irregular sleep” group had an 8% higher risk.
The research also indicated that getting the recommended amounts of nighttime sleep (7 to 9 hours for people ages 18 to 64 and 7 to 8 hours for people ages 65 and older) did not decrease risk for those who maintained healthy sleep patterns. irregular.
In other words, those people who slept a good number of hours, but at different time patterns each day, maintained an increased risk for these cardiovascular complications.
“Our results suggest that sleep regularity may be more relevant than sufficient sleep duration in modulating MACE risk. [evento cardiovascular adverso grave]”, say the authors of the study. “The results of this study suggest that more attention needs to be paid to sleep regularity in public health guidelines and clinical practice due to its potential role in cardiovascular health,” they add.
Despite this, it is important to highlight that this is an observational study and, therefore, cannot establish cause and effect. Furthermore, the researchers point out limitations in the research, such as the period in which sleep was analyzed (only one week) and the fact that the UK Biobank data cannot accurately reflect the UK population.
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This content was originally published in Irregular sleep can increase the risk of stroke and heart attack, says study on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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