Authors hope the study will increase awareness about sleep’s heart-health benefits among physicians, public health agencies and the public.
Even if you are a non-smoker who exercises and has no genetic predisposition to cardiovascular disease, skimping on sleep—or getting too much of it—can boost your risk of heart attack, according to a new CU Boulder study of nearly a half-million people.
The research, published Sept. 2 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, also found that for those at high genetic risk for heart attack, sleeping between 6 and 9 hours nightly can offset that risk.
“This provides some of the strongest proof yet that sleep duration is a key factor when it comes to heart health, and this holds true for everyone,” said senior author Celine Vetter, an assistant professor of Integrative Physiology.
For the study, Vetter and co-authors at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Manchester analyzed the genetic information, self-reported sleep habits and medical records of 461,000 UK Biobank participants age 40 to 69 who had never had a heart attack, then followed them for seven years.
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