Sleep Longer, Help Your Heart

Sleeping an extra hour may do your heart good, a new study shows.

In the study, every extra hour of sleep was associated with a 33 percent drop in participants' odds of developing coronary artery calcification over five years.

In the long run, that might cut their risk of heart attack or other heart "events," though longer studies are needed to check on that, the researchers note in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

About Coronary Artery Calcification

The study is all about tracking new cases of coronary artery calcification among nearly 500 middle-aged U.S. adults over a five-year period.

The coronary arteries supply oxygen-rich blood to heart muscle. In coronary artery disease, plaque builds up inside coronary arteries' walls, narrowing the arteries. Calcium is one of the components of plaque. The more plaque that is present, the more calcium is present in the walls of heart arteries. So measuring coronary calcium can be used as a surrogate for measuring plaque.

Sleep Habits

At the beginning of the study, participants got their coronary arteries scanned using computed tomography (CT) at the beginning and end of the study.

Participants also wore devices on their wrists for six days at the study's start to measure their activity, and they provided information on their sleep habits.

The group averaged about six hours of nightly sleep. Few people slept for more than eight hours per night, report the University of Chicago's Christopher Ryan King, and colleagues.

Longer Sleep, Less Calcification

Participants got another coronary artery CT scan at the end of the five-year study. About 12 percent had developed coronary artery calcification.

People who slept longer - as confirmed by their wrist monitors - were less likely to have developed coronary artery calcification.

"One hour more of sleep decreased the estimated odds of calcification by 33 percent," King's team writes.

Those findings take into consideration participants' age, sex, race, education level, smoking, and sleep apnea risk.

King and colleagues call for further studies to confirm the results, to learn how sleep duration is linked to coronary artery calcification, and to figure out exactly how much sleep is best for reducing coronary artery calcification risk.
By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed by Louise Chang
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