Good sleep habits linked to reduced risk of heart failure

A combination of healthy sleep habits can help reduce the risk of heart failure, new research shows.

Scientists studied 408,802 generally healthy people aged 27 to 73 between 2006 and 2010, collecting information about their sleep patterns. Each person achieved a “healthy sleep score” of zero to five, based on five healthy sleep practices: being a “morning person”; sleep seven to eight hours a night; snoring rarely or never; rarely having insomnia; and rarely too drowsy during the day.

Over an average of 10 years follow-up, there were 5,221 cases of heart failure. Compared to people who scored zero or one, those who scored two had a 15 percent reduced risk of heart failure; those who scored three had a 28 percent reduced risk; and those who scored four a 38 percent risk reduction. Those who got a perfect score of five had a 42% lower risk of heart failure than those who scored zero or one.

The study, in the journal Circulation, controlled for smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, diabetes, hypertension, and other variables. This is an observational study, however, it does not prove causation.

“We should look at all of these sleep behaviors together rather than treating them as separate phenomena,” said lead author Dr Lu Qi, professor of epidemiology at Tulane University. “People regulate their sleep as a whole, not as separate events.”