Consistent sleep improves cardiovascular health; see tips – 02/24/2023 – Equilibrium

Sleep doctors always offer some tried-and-true advice for fighting insomnia: cut down on alcohol at dinner, cut out coffee in the afternoon, stop reading on your cell phone before bed. And they beg you: please keep a constant sleep schedule.

Alternating between waking times — jumping out of bed at 7:30 am on a Friday and napping late on a Saturday — wreaks havoc on our internal body clocks. Sleep experts call this “social jet lag,” says Sabra Abbott, a sleep medicine expert at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Like changing time zones, going to bed at very different times each night can throw off your circadian rhythm.

Anyway, as anyone who has worked a night shift, babysat a child, or come home from a party knows, going to bed and waking up at the same time is easier said than done. “It’s a luxury, right?” says Kelsie Full, a behavioral epidemiologist and assistant professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Full is the lead author of a new study that has linked irregular sleep to an early marker of cardiovascular disease. The researchers examined one week’s sleep data from 2,000 adults over age 45 and found that those who slept for varying lengths each night and went to bed at different times were more likely to have hardened arteries than those with different sleep patterns. more regular.

People whose overall amounts of sleep varied by two or more hours each night throughout the week — sleeping five hours on Tuesday, say, and then eight hours on Wednesday — were especially likely to have high levels of calcified fatty plaque in their bodies. their arteries compared to those who slept the same number of hours each night.

The study couldn’t confirm that the erratic sleep patterns definitely caused the heart problems, says Full. And the findings don’t necessarily mean that a night out or waking up too early every now and then should be off-limits.

“A day or two off is fine,” says Tianyi Huang, assistant professor of sleep medicine at Harvard University and co-author of the study. “The long-term pattern is more important.”

For most people, if they get a night or two of fitful sleep, they probably won’t lose all of their circadian rhythm, says Aric Prather, a psychologist and sleep expert at the University of California, San Francisco. And if you go to bed at 4am on a Saturday, it’s probably better to sleep until noon and avoid some of the acute effects of sleep loss than forcing yourself to wake up at the time you usually get up for work, he says. .

But the new study supports what previous research has theorized: stable sleep is crucial for health. A 2020 study found that people ages 45 to 84 with irregular sleep schedules were nearly twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease as those with more regular sleep patterns. An analysis of more than 90,000 people linked circadian rhythm disruptions with an increased risk of mood disorders. Researchers have even linked irregular sleep patterns to high cholesterol levels and hypertension.

Over the past decade, researchers have reinforced the connection between sleep and heart health, specifically. In the summer of 2022, the American Heart Association added sleep duration to its checklist for measuring cardiovascular health. One theory of why consistent sleep benefits the heart is that maintaining the circadian rhythm — the 24-hour cycle of the body’s internal clock — helps regulate cardiovascular function, he says. And a growing body of research shows that catching up on sleep during the weekends isn’t worth staying awake during the week, he adds.

People often think that sleeping in after several nights of limited sleep or insomnia will make them feel better, points out Marri Horvat, a sleep specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. “But it usually doesn’t help,” she says. “Keeping a regular, set schedule is more likely to put your body in a position to maintain full nights of sleep going forward.”

So what do you do to go to bed and wake up at fixed times? We asked sleep doctors to share tips.

How to create a consistent sleep schedule

Create rewards. Set a wake-up goal that feels achievable (even if it’s challenging), Prather says — and then reward yourself for getting out of bed. This could mean going to your favorite coffee shop or saving the show you wanted to watch for Saturday morning instead of Friday night.

Pay attention to your bedtime ritual. A regular bedtime routine — reading a few pages of a novel after brushing your teeth, for example — can help set a sleep schedule. But the hours before you wind down for sleep also matter, points out Horvat. In the four hours or so before bed, avoid alcohol, she suggests, and don’t exercise (you can shift your dedicated exercise time to the morning). These changes will help you fall asleep faster and sleep longer.

Find an accountability partner. Ask a friend or family member to wake up at the same time as you, recommends Prather, and take responsibility for texting each other when you wake up. Better yet, make a plan for an early brunch or morning walk to give yourself more motivation to get up.

Sunbathe. Light helps regulate our circadian rhythm, says Abbott, signaling our bodies that it’s time to wake up. Take a morning walk (even a brief one), weather permitting, so you’re exposed to sunlight at the same time each day, she recommends.

Choose the most annoying alarm possible. If you can’t get out of bed on the weekends, Prather says, go for the nuclear option: Set an alarm you can’t ignore. Choose annoying music as your alarm clock or try a puzzle alarm – an app that makes you solve a puzzle to turn it off. As an extra wake-up incentive, keep your phone across the room at night instead of nearby so you have to force yourself out of bed to turn off the alarm.

Give thanks to yourself. “How aligned you are with your body clock and how consistent you keep things is important,” says Prather. “But that doesn’t mean every little moment, every week, matters.” Long-term sleep patterns are more important for overall health, he adds, rather than worrying about a bad night or two. “It takes the pressure off,” he says.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves