A consistent bedtime may play a meaningful role in lowering blood pressure, according to new research examining how sleep timing affects heart health.
While most people think primarily about getting enough hours of sleep, experts say when you sleep also has an important effect on heart health.
Sleep duration and sleep timing work together, and that consistency is a key part of supporting cardiovascular wellness.
Recent findings have supported that connection. In a study published in the journal Sleep Advances, adults with high blood pressure who kept a consistent bedtime for two weeks saw modest but meaningful improvements in their readings, even though they did not sleep longer hours.
Such a simple step of sticking to the same sleep schedule every night could improve a person’s blood pressure, the study suggests.
In just two weeks, people whose sleep schedules shifted to a regular sleep schedule saw improvements in blood pressure that were equal to those seen when people exercised more or reduced their salt intake, the study showed.
“This may be a simple, low-risk, helpful strategy to control blood pressure in many people with hypertension,” wrote a team of researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), in Portland.
The study was small, involving 11 middle-aged people with hypertension. But the results were so impressive that the team said “this needs to be tested in a larger randomized controlled trial.”
As the researchers explained, it has long been known that daily changes in the time a person goes to bed are linked to poorer heart health. One study found that irregular sleep schedules can increase a person’s chances of high blood pressure by 30%.
According to the Oregon team, disruptions in the body’s circadian rhythms probably explain the effects of irregular sleep schedules on blood pressure.
The researchers explained that blood pressure naturally drops slightly during sleep, but a disrupted “biological clock” can weaken this response.
In the study, Thosar’s group monitored the blood pressure of 11 middle-aged adults as they underwent a week of their normal (less regular) sleep/wake cycle.
They then asked participants to stick to a set sleep schedule for two weeks. This meant that the difference in sleep times from night to night went from an average of 30 minutes to just about seven minutes.
Participants were not asked to change sleep duration, only sleep time.
The result: Blood pressure within 24 hours dropped by 4 mmHg systolic and 3 mmHg diastolic (the top and bottom numbers in a reading). That’s equivalent to making major lifestyle changes, such as reducing sodium intake or exercising more frequently, the team said.
Heart experts already know that a reduction in systolic reading of even 5 mmHG can reduce cardiovascular risks by 10%, the researchers noted.
According to the researchers, if the study results are replicated in a larger, prospective trial, efforts to get people to stick to regular sleep schedules “could be a low-cost and highly scalable intervention to reduce cardiovascular risk.”
