In an analysis of the sleep habits of over 72,000 people, researchers identified a particular pattern that can dramatically spike the risk of major cardiovascular problems. The good news is that the pattern is relatively easy to avoid. You've always known it, and science continually proves it: getting sufficient sleep is important for good health.
Lack of quality shut-eye has been linked to , , more of , and more. Researchers are now starting to focus not only on how much sleep you get, but the form that sleep takes. For example, studies have found that getting too much sleep , while going to bed and waking up at inconsistent times has .
Perhaps it's no surprise then, that researchers in Australia and Canada have just revealed that irregular sleep patterns raise the risk of getting some types of cardiovascular disease – including heart attack, heart failure and stroke – by 26%. The researchers looked at 72,269 people aged between 40 and 79 who have taken part in the , a massive database of genetic, lifestyle and health information from over 500,000 UK participants. None of the participants selected had a previous history of major cardiovascular events.
All participants wore an activity tracker for seven days. The data gleaned from those devices was then used to create a sleep regularity index from (SRI) from 0-100 based on variability in bedtime, wake times, sleep duration, and how many times someone awoke during the night. People with SRIs above 87 were considered to hav.