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Duration, timing of sleep may influence CV health behavior
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Duration and chronotype of sleep appear to have a relationship with CV health behaviors, according to data published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
“The most important takeaway from the study was that it is not about getting more sleep, but getting adequate sleep at optimal times,” Freda Patterson, PhD, a researcher at the University of Delaware, Newark, told Cardiology Today.
Freda Patterson
In the study, short sleep was defined as less than 6 hours, adequate sleep as 7 to 8 hours, and long sleep as 9 hours or more. A cross-sectional sample of 439,933 participants from the UK Biobank project were asked about their sleep patterns, physical activity, how much time they spent on the computer or watching television, how much fruits and vegetables they ate and how many cigarettes they smoked each day. Participants were also categorized by their chronotype — whether they were a morning person, more morning than evening, more evening than morning or an evening person.
According to the results, short sleepers were 45% more likely to smoke tobacco than adequate sleepers (9.8% vs. 6.9%). In addition, late chronotypes were more than twice as likely to smoke tobacco than intermediate types (14.9% vs. 7.4%). In terms of television viewing time, long sleepers reported 0.61 more hours of television per day than adequate sleepers. Early chronotypes spent 0.2 fewer daily hours in front of the computer screen and ate 0.25 more servings of fruit and 0.13 more servings of vegetables per day compared with late chronotypes.
“Our findings that healthy CV behaviors were associated with the early chronotype suggests that people who go to bed early are more conscientious and are goal-getters,” Patterson said in an interview.
Patterson and colleagues called for more research into whether sleep metrics predict CV health behaviors across time and whether modifying sleep behaviors can improve CV health. – by Tracey Romero
For more information:
Freda Patterson, PhD, can be reached at 019 Carpenter Sports Building, Department of Behavioral Health and Nutrition, College of Health Sciences, Newark, DE 19716; email: fredap@UDel.edu.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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