Healthy Sleep Patterns Reduce the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Sleep is an important goal for all of us and related to good health. For adults, 7-9 hours of sleep a day/night is recommended.² A quality sleep pattern follows a circadian rhythm that supports healthy brain, function and body homeostasis. Irregular sleep patterns, however, are associated with obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.²

A recent study showed that a healthy sleep pattern lowers the risk of atrial fibrillation and bradyarrhythmias.³ The investigators prospectively followed a total of 403,187 participants from the UK Biobank. A healthy sleep pattern was defined by chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, and daytime sleepiness. Researchers analyzed 11,724 incident atrial fibrillation/flutter episodes, 1725 incident ventricular arrhythmias and 4349 incident bradyarrhythmias over a median 11 years of follow-up. A healthy sleep pattern was significantly associated with lower risks of atrial fibrillation/flutter (HR comparing extreme categories: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.64-0.80) and bradyarrhythmias (HR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.54-0.77) but not ventricular arrhythmias. The data was adjusted for demographic lifestyle, and genetic risk factors. The above statistics transform into a 29% and 35% lower risk of developing atrial fibrillation/flutter and bradyarrhythmias, respectively.

As we know, our sleep patterns may be disturbed by stress, travel, or anxiety. If the patient reports a good sleep pattern, these above results support a baseline for a lowered risk for atrial fibrillation/flutter or bradyarrythmia events.

Another important patient collection data may be to query a patient (or significant other) about their sleep pattern, especially in patients prescribed drugs affecting sleep.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Population Health Learning Network or HMP Global, their employees, and affiliates. Any content provided by our bloggers or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, association, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything. 

References:

1. Help Guide. How Much Sleep Do You Need? Updated April 2021. Accessed August 2021. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/sleep-needs-get-the-sleep-you-need.htm
2. Huang T, Mariani S, Redline S. Sleep Irregularity and Risk of Cardiovascular Events: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2020;75(9):991-999. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2019.12.054
3. Li X, Zhou T, Ma H, et al. Healthy Sleep Patterns and Risk of Incident Arrhythmias. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2021;78(12):1197-1207. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2021.07.023