Senior living residents with irregular sleep patterns — those who have no regular bedtime and wake-up schedule, or they get varying nightly amounts of sleep — are almost twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease, a new study federal study has found.
The five-year investigation suggests that an irregular sleep pattern may be a unique risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and that maintaining regular sleep patterns could help prevent heart disease, the researchers said. The researchers said they remain unclear about the biological underpinnings at play, but they suspect multiple factors, including harmful circadian rhythm disturbances.
“We hope that our study will help raise awareness about the potential importance of a regular sleep pattern in improving heart health. It is a new frontier in sleep medicine,” said lead study author Tianyi Huang, Sc.D, an epidemiologist with the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Full findings from the study appear online on March 2 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Previous studies have linked insufficient amounts of sleep to a higher risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
