Have a sound sleep routine to stay fit

Duke University scientists claim to have found a link between heart disease risk and irregular sleeping patterns. They say that it’s not clear whether one causes the other, but they believe striving for regular sleep could help lower your risk.

For most adults these days, achieving the goal of seven hours sleep a night is a stretch. And yet, scientists at Duke University want to add one more thing to your well- being to do list: set a strict bed time.

New research published today in the journal

Scientific Reports shows adults who don’t stick to a regular schedule are more often heavier, less healthy, with higher blood sugar levels and higher blood pressure.

The researchers said it’s not clear whether those symptoms are the things that cause people to have more erratic sleep, or whether erratic sleep causes those symptoms.

“Perhaps all of these things are impacting each other,” said Jessica Lunsford- Avery, PhD, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the study's lead author. But either way, she concludes, after assessing 1,978 people, that striving for a solid seven hours between the same times every night can’t hurt your chances of keeping your health in check.

“Heart disease and diabetes are extremely common in the United States, are extremely costly and also are leading causes of death in this country,” she said. “To the extent we can predict individuals at risk for these diseases, we may be able to prevent or delay their onset.” Dr LunsfordAvery’s study gave each participant, aged 54 to 93, a device that tracked sleep schedules, specific to the minute. They found that people with hypertension tended to sleep more hours, and people with obesity tended to stay up later. But crucially, they found the regularity of a person’s sleep was the best measure to predict a person’s heart and metabolic disease risk.

Irregular sleepers were also more likely to report depression and stress than regular sleepers.