Stable Sleeping Pattern Can Help Your Heart And Prevent Diseases

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In a study conducted by the Northwestern University of Chicago, researchers claimed that having a stable sleeping pattern can help your heart  recover and rejuvenate from the stresses of everyday living and can help prevent diseases.

Eating a proper diet and having a stable sleeping pattern can help your heart stay healthy

The team who conducted the study claim that a stable bedtime habit with adequate sleeping times supports the heart in filtering out stress hormones, as the body’s system of begins the recovery process as they studied an internal mechanism called the circadian rhythm.

This process, also called the body clock, allows the body to synchronize body functions in relation to the 24-hour rotational pattern of the Earth. In humans, this clock is regulated by the body senses, particularly the eyes as it perceives light as day and dark as nighttime, as well as the way skin senses temperature changes.

This internal mechanism rules the body’s daily rhythms from metabolism, sleep and waking patterns and by altering this rhythm like working during ideal sleeping hours or stresses the brain and may even cause long term health problems.

‘In modern society, social opportunity and work demand have caused people to become more active during late evening hours leading to a shift from the predominantly daytime lifestyle to a more nocturnal one. Our results suggest shift workers, who are chronically exposed to circadian misalignment, might not fully benefit from the restorative cardiovascular effects of night-time sleep following a shift-work rotation, “says study author Dr. Daniela Grimaldi, whose research findings were published in the journal Hypertension.

Dr. Grimaldi and her team conducted sleep deprivation tests on 26 healthy participants aged 20 to 39, where they were made to sleep only five hours for eight days, with four of those days their bedtimes delayed by 8.5 hours.

The researchers found that disrupting the sleep pattern increased the participants’ heart rates and an increase in the production of the stress hormone norepinephrine that constricts the blood vessels that raises the blood pressure and expands the windpipe.

When people are supposed to get into a deep sleep phase, the heart beat ideally slows down as it is controlled by the vagal nerve, for which the participants were not able to go through this deep sleep phase that resulted to reduced vagal activity and higher heart beat.

Experts believe that today’s work environment and the demands that go with it are one of the main causes of sleep deprivation and although frequent naps are often thought to be staggered offsets for the lack of it, they say that it is not the case.

During the deep sleep phase, the brain recharges from work exhaustion, cells in the body repair themselves and releases important hormones to allow the body and organs to function properly- which does not happen during short naps.

Naps are generally short periods of sleep state but are a whole lot different from the deep sleep phase according to Dr. Ruth Benca, professor of psychiatry and director for the Center of Sleep Medicine and Research at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

“People used to think that it was better to pull an all-nighter than to break it up with a short nap, but that is not true,” Dr. Benca said, adding that in case there was a lack of sleep, it is good to try and make up for it at any time of the day.

However, what are the benefits of naps are those snippets of sleep periods where it is better to take naps than none at all.

Sleep time varies with age because these are important periods of total rest that is essential for helping the body recover and repair from all physical and mental activities done for the day.

Below is a list of recommended sleep times categorized per age group;

• Babies – 16 hours
• Children aged  3-12 – 10 hours
• Teenagers aged 13-18 – 10 hours
• Adults aged 19-55 – 8 hours
• People aged 55 and above – 6 hours

Another trivial fact that would keep people up on their toes is that people are more likely to die first from sleep deprivation compared to starvation.

While it would take two weeks for an average person to die of hunger, it only takes ten straight days for someone to die without sleep.

Experts advise that there needs to be proper awareness campaigns for people to understand that having stable sleeping pattern can help your heart stay healthy and eventually lead to increased productivity.

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