A study involving 115,000 participants from 21 countries from all over the world (from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe and Canada to Sweden and Argentina), who were part of the “Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology” or PURE for short looked into how sleep influenced the risk of a cardiovascular event – CV event (that is a heart attack or stroke).
The subjects were followed up for an average period of eight years and their lifestyle, family history of health problems, Researchers followed up with the participants for an average of eight years, asking them questions about their lifestyle habits (smoking, drinking alcohol, diet, exercise) and family histories of health problems.
Around 4,350 people died during this period and roughly another 4,350 had a CV event.
The study found that:
- An estimated total sleep duration of 6–8 h per day is associated with the lowest risk of death and a CV event.
- The individuals who slept more than 9 hours per day, when compared with those who slept from 6 to 8 hours daily, were usually women, smokers, hypertensives, less educated, rural inhabitants and aged over 50 years.
- Those who slept less than 6 hours per day were fatter (had higher BMI and waist-to-hip ratio) and were more likely to have diabetes but, less likely to drink alcohol.
- The median sleep duration of all individuals was 8 hours per day.
When it came to cardiovascular risk, the researchers noticed the following:
- Those who slept between 6–8 hours per day had the lowest incidences of all causes of mortality.
- Mortality risk was significantly higher in those sleeping more than 8 hours.
- It was high, but not statistically significant in the subjects that slept less than 6 hours.
Three groups showed an increased risk of death and major CV incidents when compared to those who 6–8 hours at night and did not take daytime naps:
- Those who slept the same amount at night and also took naps during the day.
- Those who slept less than 5 hours at night and didn’t nap during daytime.
- Those who slept longer at night (avg. 9.6 hours per day) with or without napping.
Looking into the impact of daytime napping , the study found that there was a higher risks in those who slept more than 6 hours each night, but not in those who slept less than 6 hours nightly, for this group, the authors suggest that daytime napping somehow mitigated the fact that they slept less than 6 hours per night.
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(1) Chuangshi Wang, Shrikant I Bangdiwala, Sumathy Rangarajan, Scott A Lear, Khalid F AlHabib, Viswanathan Mohan, Koon Teo, Paul Poirier, Lap Ah TSE, Zhiguang Liu, Annika Rosengren, Rajesh Kumar, Patricio Lopez-Jaramillo, Khalid Yusoff, Nahed Monsef, Vijayakumar Krishnapillai, Noorhassim Ismail, Pamela Seron, Antonio L Dans, Lanthé Kruger, Karen Yeates, Lloyd Leach, Rita Yusuf, Andres Orlandini, Maria Wolyniec, Ahmad Bahonar, Indu Mohan, Rasha Khatib, Ahmet Temizhan, Wei Li, Salim Yusuf; Association of estimated sleep duration and naps with mortality and cardiovascular events: a study of 116 632 people from 21 countries , European Heart Journal, , ehy695, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehy695
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