The axiom ‘early to bed and early to rise…’ seems to have some truth in it after all. In a study titled ‘Accelerometer-derived sleep onset timing and cardiovascular disease incidence: a UK Biobank cohort study’ that was published in the European Heart Journal, researchers found that sleeping between 10 and 11 pm might be linked to good cardiovascular health. For the study, the sleep onsite times (SOTs) and waking times of 88,026 participants were collected for seven days. Then their cardiovascular health was monitored over seven years. As many as 3,172 of the participants developed heart ailments later. The SOTs were collected through a wrist watch-like device called accelometer which the participants volunteered to wear. It was found that SOTs earlier than 10 pm and later than 11 pm were associated with increased cardiovascular diseases (CVD) risk, especially among women. The highest incidence of CVD was found in participants with SOTs after midnight. In earlier studies, sleep health has been related to other CVD risks like hypertension and obesity, but this is one of the few studies that brings the focus on circadian rhythm and the role it plays in heart health. Study author Dr David Plans told BBC: “While we cannot conclude causation from our study, the results suggest that early or late bedtimes may be more likely to disrupt the body clock, with adverse consequences for cardiovascular health.” Though the study primarily considered data from White British population, similar studies may help understanding CVD burden among South Asians who tend to die earlier from heart diseases. The Indian Heart Association says that heart disease rate among Indians/South Asians is double that of the national averages of the western world. This may be attributed to an underlying genetic predisposition to metabolic deregulation and cardiomyopathy, as well as a recent shift towards increasing consumption of red meats / saturated fats / trans fats / junk foods and higher stress in sedentary lifestyles. Recently, the deaths of Kannada actor Puneeth Rajkumar, cricketer Avi Barot and TV actor Siddharth Shukla from cardiac arrests at a young age have pointed towards the need to understand cardiac health better.
