Prevent Heart Failure with Healthy Sleep Patterns

Maintaining a healthy sleeping pattern will help you in many ways and a recent study has explained that adults who follow a healthy sleep pattern have a 42% lower risk of heart failure compared to adults with unhealthy sleeping patterns.

According to a new study published in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation, maintaining a healthy sleep pattern is highly sufficient. It is about rising early in the morning, sleeping 7-8 hours a day and having no frequent insomnia, snoring or excessive daytime sleepiness.

Heart failure affects more than 26 million people, and other evidence indicates sleep problems may play a role in the development of heart failure. Many researches prove that sleeping less will cause disruption in underlying health conditions and also with metabolism, blood pressure, inflammation and the same may be true for oversleeping. So keeping up a healthy sleep pattern will be more than just keeping you happy and fresh.

Lu Qi, M.D., Ph.D., corresponding author and professor of epidemiology and director of the Obesity Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans said, “The healthy sleep score we created was based on the scoring of these five sleep behaviors.” He also added, “Our findings highlight the importance of improving overall sleep patterns to help prevent heart failure.”

Sleep behaviors were collected through touch screen questionnaires and sleep duration was defined into three groups – short, or less than 7 hours a day; recommended, or 7 to 8 hours a day; and prolonged, or 9 hours or more a day.

They also found the risk of heart failure was independently associated and:

• 8% lower in early risers;
• 12% lower in those who slept 7 to 8 hours daily;
• 17% lower in those who did not have frequent insomnia; and
• 34% lower in those reporting no daytime sleepiness.