But even a mild chronic sleep deficit may heighten the risk of developing heart disease later in life: Surveys of thousands of people have found that people who report mild but chronic sleep deficits have more heart disease later in life than people who get adequate sleep.
After just six weeks of shortened sleep, the study found, that the cells that line our blood vessels are flooded by damaging oxidants. And unlike well-rested cells, sleep-restricted cells fail to activate antioxidant responses to clear the destructive molecules.
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The result: cells that are inflamed and dysfunctional, an early step in the development of cardiovascular disease.
Sleep Deficit Spurs A Deluge of Oxidants in Blood Vessels
“This is some of the first direct evidence to show that mild chronic sleep deficits cause heart disease,” says study leader Sanja Jelic, MD, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Columbia and professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
“Until now we’ve only seen associations between sleep and heart health in epidemiological studies, but these studies could be tainted by many confounders that cannot be identified and adjusted for. Only randomized controlled studies can determine if this connection is real and what changes in the body caused by short sleep could increase heart disease.”
Studies of human sleep have examined the physiological effects of a few nights of profound sleep deprivation. “But that’s not how people behave night after night. Most people get up around the same time each day but tend to push back their bedtime one to two hours,” Jelic says. “We wanted to mimic that behavior, which is the most common sleep pattern we see in adults.”
The researchers screened nearly 1,000 women in Washington Heights for the study, enrolling 35 healthy women who normally sleep seven to eight hours each night who could complete the 12-week study.
For six weeks the women slept according to their usual routine; for the other six weeks, they went to bed 1.5 hours later than usual. Each participant’s sleep was verified with wrist-worn sleep trackers.
Reference :
- Mild sleep restriction increases endothelial oxidative stress in female persons – (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42758-y)
Source: Eurekalert
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