A recent study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that quite modest changes to sleep, exercise and diet could still have a meaningful effect on heart health.
This was reported in the press with the claim that 11 minutes extra sleep could cut heart attacks and strokes by 10 per cent. But this headline is misleading.
The study looked at the effects of more sleep, more exercise and a better diet combined.
To get that 10 per cent reduction from sleep alone, the study found you’d actually need about half an hour extra each night. Furthermore, that 10 per cent doesn’t mean your personal chances of a heart attack drop by 10 per cent.
The study followed 53,000 participants over eight years and, in that time, just over 2,000 cardiovascular ‘events’ were reported. That’s 3.8 per cent of the study population.
If they’d all had the extra sleep to gain the 10 per cent reduction, this figure would have dropped to just 3.4 per cent of the study population.
Nevertheless, the overall message is still valid; getting a good night’s sleep is an important contributor to a healthy heart. One of the reasons for this is that your blood pressure normally drops during the night, due to lower cortisol levels.
Not sleeping enough prevents your blood pressure from dropping as much. This increases the stress on blood vessels, which in turn leads to the hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis).
Waking before your body is ready also unleashes a morning surge of stress hormones on your nervous system.
A study in the US in 2014 found that the number of heart attacks rises by 25 per cent on the Monday morning after the clocks go forward, when we miss out on an hour of sleep.
Hitting the snooze button won’t necessarily save your life but, over time, it might extend it.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Francesca Stuckey Howard, Plymouth) 'How much good will an extra 10 minutes of sleep do?'
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