You’re already doing almost everything right for your heart. Just a few minutes are missing, according to researchers.
What if a few extra minutes of sleep could protect your heart from the worst? A heart attack occurs when an artery in the heart suddenly becomes blocked. Deprived of oxygen, the heart muscle becomes damaged and, without rapid treatment, the damage can be irreversible. High blood pressure, excess cholesterol, diabetes and smoking are among the main risk factors. But our daily lifestyle habits, and in particular our sleep, have a very strong impact on cardiovascular risk, as demonstrated by a new study carried out on 53,000 people.
The team from the University of Sydney, Australia, followed the lifestyle habits of these volunteers for 8 years. She studied their sleep, physical activity and diet. “These behaviors are particularly interdependent and influence each other” remind the researchers. Sleep and physical activity were measured using wrist-worn sensors, while dietary quality was assessed using a 100-point nutritional score. The goal: to identify the smallest possible changes in these three habits that can reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke or heart failure.
The results, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, show that sleeping just 11 minutes more per night is enough to reduce the risk of heart attack by 10%. So, if a person sleeps 6 hours, moving to 6:10–15 hours of sleep is already beneficial. If someone sleeps 7 hours, aiming for 7:15 also improves the score. The ideal is to get closer to the recommended 7 to 9 hours, even if it means drooling on the pillow. But to benefit from this effect, one condition: add around 4.5 minutes of moderate physical activity to your day, such as brisk walking, and around 60 g of vegetables on your plate (which is equivalent to a small handful of green beans or 3 to 4 tablespoons of cooked vegetables).
For comparison, to get the same 10% reduction from just sleep, you would need to sleep 30 minutes more each night. As the researchers explain, “Focusing on combining behaviors, rather than strictly adhering to a single goal, can produce important health benefits while making the effort easier to maintain”. And the benefits can go even further. Participants who slept between 8 and 9.5 hours per night, engaged in at least 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day and ate a good-quality diet rich in plants reduced their risk of heart attack by 57% compared to others.
The take-home message? Sleeping well is already a good start to taking care of your heart. Beyond the duration, the regularity of sleep also plays a key role. Going to bed and getting up at set times, even on weekends, remains the easiest way to gain those precious minutes of sleep. And if you really have trouble getting up, don’t forget that a plant more powerful than ginseng in the morning has demonstrated its benefits in pulverizing fatigue. The cumulative effect of a healthy lifestyle can make a real difference to your health.
