Good Sleep could extend your life by years: Research

• Regular sleep can improve heart health, life expectancy, and reduce risk of dying young.
• Regular sleeping habits can improve sleep quality.
• Prior to bedtime, avoid caffeine and electronic devices.

Getting enough sleep can improve your heart, general health, and possibly even your life expectancy, according to recent research presented at the World Congress of Cardiology and the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session.

A regular sleeping schedule: Better sleep can be achieved by maintaining a consistent bedtime and wakeup time throughout the day. Prior to bedtime, avoid caffeine and electronic devices to improve sleep quality.

The study found that young people who had better sleep had a slightly lower risk of dying young. Additionally, the statistics suggest that irregular sleeping patterns may be responsible for approximately 8% of all deaths.

Frank Qian, MD, an internal medicine resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School, and co-author of the study, stated, “We saw a clear dose-response relationship, so the more beneficial factors someone has in terms of having a higher quality of sleep, they also have a stepwise lowering of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.”

These results, in my opinion, point out that getting enough sleep is not enough. You absolutely need to sleep well and have little trouble falling and staying asleep.”

Qian and the team used data from 172,321 people who took part in the National Health Interview Survey between 2013 and 2018, 54% of whom were women and had an average age of 50.

Each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics conduct this survey, which asks about sleep and sleeping habits to help determine how healthy the population of the United States.

According to Qian, this is the first study to use a nationally representative sample to investigate how a variety of sleep behaviors, not just sleep duration, may affect life expectancy.

Two-thirds of participants in the study self-identified as White, 14.5 percent as Hispanic, 12.6% as Black, and 5.5% as Asian.

Through December 31, 2019, the National Death Index records of participants could be linked by researchers, allowing them to investigate the connection between individual and combined sleep factors and all-cause and cause-specific mortality.

The average follow-up time for participants was 4.3 years, during which time 8,681 people died. 2,610 (or 30 percent) of these deaths were caused by cardiovascular disease, 2,052 (or 24 percent) by cancer, and 4,019 (or 46 percent) by other causes.

Using a low-risk sleep score they created from survey responses, the researchers evaluated five distinct aspects of quality sleep. These include:

1) The ideal amount of sleep is seven to eight hours per night.

2) You have trouble falling asleep no more than twice a week.

3) You have trouble staying asleep no more than twice a week.

4) You don’t take any sleep aids.

5) You feel well rested after waking up at least five days per week.

For a maximum of five points, which indicated the highest quality of sleep, each factor received zero or one point.

Qian said, “People are more likely to live longer if they have all these ideal sleep behaviors.” Therefore, we may be able to prevent some of this premature mortality if we can improve sleep overall and identify sleep disorders.

The researchers took into account other potential risk factors for death in the analysis, such as lower socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol consumption, and medical conditions.

People with all five favourable sleep factors had a 30% lower risk of dying from any cause, a 21% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, a 19% lower risk of dying from cancer, and a 40% lower risk of dying from causes other than heart disease or cancer.

According to Qian, these additional deaths are most likely the result of accidents, infections, or neurodegenerative conditions like dementia and Parkinson’s disease; however, additional research is required.

Life expectancy was 4.7 years higher for men and 2.4 years higher for women among those who reported having all five quality sleep measures (a score of five) compared to those who had none or only one of the five favorable aspects of low-risk sleep.

To figure out why men with all five low-risk sleep factors lived twice as long as women with the same quality of sleep, more research is needed.

Qian stated, “Even from a young age, if people can develop these good sleep habits of getting enough sleep, making sure they are sleeping without too many distractions, and having good sleep hygiene overall, it can greatly benefit their overall long-term health.”

He added that although the model can be used to predict gains at older ages as well, they estimated gains in life expectancy beginning at age 30 for the current analysis. Young people need to be aware that a lot of health behaviors are accumulated over time.

We often say, “It’s never too late to exercise or quit smoking,” but it’s never too early to start. Additionally, we ought to talk about and evaluate sleep more frequently.”

The researchers hope that patients and clinicians will begin discussing sleep as part of their overall health assessment and disease management planning. These sleep habits can be easily asked about during clinical encounters.

The fact that sleep habits were self-reported and not objectively measured or verified is one of the study’s limitations.

In addition, participants’ use of sleep aids or medications, as well as their frequency and duration of use, were unknown.

To learn more about how these increases in life expectancy might continue as people get older and to investigate the gender differences that were observed, additional research is required.

Studies in the past have demonstrated that getting too little or too much sleep can harm the heart.

Additionally, it has been widely reported that sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that causes a person to pause or stop breathing while they are asleep, can result in a variety of heart conditions, including heart attacks, atrial fibrillation, and high blood pressure.

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