Sleeping late is not just a bad habit, it runs any real health risks. Explanations.
The brain stroke is scary: it occurs suddenly and sometimes without alert signs. If it is not easily predictable, there are, however, several risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, excess cholesterol, stress, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes or alcohol consumption. Among the other slightly less known risk factors: sleep time, sleep quality and more particularly the hour at which we fall into the evening which would have an impact on cardiovascular risk and especially stroke.
To define this limit hour, researchers have collected, thanks to a wrist sensor, the hours of falling asleep and alarm clock of more than 88,000 participants (aged 61 on average, 58% were women) over a period of 7 days. None had cardiac history and suffered from insomnia or sleep apnea. From this data, the researchers examined the link between the time of falling asleep and the incidence of cardiovascular diseases. In total, more than 3,000 cardiovascular diseases (stroke or brain attack, heart attack, heart failure …) were reported in participants within 6 years of data meditation.
The study authors showed that the people who were the least likely to have a stroke were those who fell asleep between 10 p.m. and 10:59 p.m. The risk of cardiovascular disease was 25 % higher with falling asleep after midnight, 12 % higher between 11:00 p.m. and 11:59 p.m. and 24 % higher to fall asleep before 10:00 p.m. This cardiovascular sur-risk was stronger in women, potentially because of the way the endocrine system reacts to a disturbance of the circadian pace, indicate researchers in their study published in the European Heart Journal, a review of the European Cardiology Society (ESC).
Although researchers cannot conclude a cause and effect link, their results suggest that going to bed sooner or later could be more likely to disrupt the biological clock, with harmful consequences on cardiovascular health. “”The optimal time to fall asleep seems to be at a precise moment in the 24 -hour body cycle and that any gap can be harmful to health. The most risky moment is the one after midnight, potentially because it can reduce the probability of seeing morning light, which resets the biological clock“, Confirms Dr. David Plans, author of the study at the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom. More in-depth research is necessary at the time of sleep as an independent cardiac risk factor, especially in women.
