Consistently Getting a Good Night’s

New research finds that consistently getting good quality sleep can help reduce cardiovascular disease risk.
Sleep and health are intimately connected, with poor sleep linkedTrusted Source to a greater chance of developing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and anxiety.

While research shows the importance of high-quality sleep, many studies have looked at people’s sleep patterns at one point in time. But sleep habits can change over the course of a person’s life, so a single measurement may not always show the whole picture for someone’s health over their lifetime.
To gain a better understanding of how changes in sleep patterns affect health, researchers from China examined people’s sleep patterns at two different time points, several years apart.

As with earlier research, they found that higher quality sleep was linked to better health — in this case, a lower risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.
However, even people who had high quality sleep only at one point in time saw a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to those with ongoing poor sleep quality.

Sleep is a key part of heart health
Although the study fits with earlier research, it has certain limitations.
For example, because the participants were all older adults from China, the results may not apply to younger people or those with different racial or ethnic backgrounds.
So “we need to have more studies from other regions of the world,” said Khan, “to see if these results can be replicated in those other areas.”

In addition, this was an observational study, which means “it doesn’t necessarily show that poor sleep quality causes the cardiovascular condition,” Chen told Healthline, only that there is a link between the two.
“It could be that there are other factors, such as depression or stress, that cause both poor sleep quality and cardiovascular disease,” he said.
Researchers didn’t take into account all of these other factors.

For example, “they didn’t look at other aspects of sleep quality that we consider very important,” said Chen, “specifically, sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.”
Takeaway
In a study of over 15,000 retired workers, researchers found that those who maintained good sleep quality over a five-year period had the lowest risk of cardiovascular disease, specifically coronary heart disease and stroke.
However, even people who had good-quality sleep at only one point in the study had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to those with poor sleep throughout the study.

The study relied on questionnaires to assess people’s sleep quality, which may not be accurate. In addition, researchers didn’t assess other factors that can affect cardiovascular disease risk, such as sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and depression.