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It’s difficult to overstate the heart’s importance to health. Responsible for pumping blood throughout the body, the heart powers the circulatory system1 that ensures that all the organs and tissues in the body get the oxygen they need.
Unfortunately, heart problems are a leading cause of illness and death in the United States. While it’s already well-known that factors like poor diet, limited exercise, and smoking can harm the heart, there’s a growing recognition of the dangers of sleep deprivation for heart health.
Sleep provides time for the body to restore and recharge, playing a key role in nearly all aspects of physical health. For the cardiovascular system, insufficient or fragmented sleep can contribute to problems with blood pressure and heighten the risk of heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes, and stroke.
As a result, getting good sleep may help prevent damage to the cardiovascular system, and for people with heart problems, can be part of following a heart-healthy lifestyle.
Substantial evidence demonstrates that sleeping problems, including sleep deprivation and fragmented sleep, have negative effects on heart health.
Sleep is an essential time for the body to recuperate. During the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stages, heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, and breathing stabilizes. These changes reduce stress on the heart, allowing it to recover from strain that occurs during waking hours.
Without sufficient nightly sleep, a person doesn’t spend enough time in the deep stages of NREM sleep that benefit the heart. The same problem can affect people whose sleep is frequently interrupted.
As a result, chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to numerous heart problems including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, obesity, diabetes, and stroke.
During normal, healthy sleep, blood pressure drops by around 10-20%. This is known as nocturnal dipping, and research highlights its role in cardiovascular health.
Poor sleep, whether from a lack of sleep or sleep disruptions, is associated with non-dipping, meaning that a person’s blood pressure doesn’t go down at night. Studies have found that elevated nighttime blood pressure is tied to overall hypertension (high blood pressure).
In fact, nocturnal blood pressure has been found to be even more predictive of heart problems than high blood pressure during the day. Non-dipping has been tied to an increased risk of stroke and heart attack. It’s also been linked to kidney problems and reduced blood flow to the brain.
Raised daytime blood pressure has been identified as a consequence of sleep deprivation in multiple studies, but it doesn’t affect all people equally. The link between lack of sleep and high blood pressure is highest in middle-aged adults. People who work long hours in high-stress jobs and people with other risk factors for hypertension are more likely to have raised blood pressure after chronic poor sleep.
DISCOVER THE GIFT OF SLEEP: HEALY WATCH
