Is Lack of Sleep Bad for Your Heart?

Check out this answer from Consensus:

The evidence strongly suggests that lack of sleep is detrimental to heart health. Insufficient sleep increases cardiovascular risk factors, morbidity, and mortality. Maintaining a healthy sleep pattern, including adequate duration and quality, is crucial for reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

The relationship between sleep and cardiovascular health has been a subject of increasing interest in recent years. Numerous studies have investigated how insufficient sleep impacts various cardiovascular risk factors and overall heart health.

Key Insights

• Increased Cardiovascular Risk Factors:
  • Insufficient sleep is associated with increased blood pressure, impaired glucose metabolism, hormonal imbalances, and heightened inflammation, all of which are known to elevate cardiovascular risk1 6 9.
  • Partial sleep deprivation leads to increased sympathetic activity, higher serum norepinephrine levels, and venous endothelial dysfunction, which are linked to higher cardiovascular risk2.
• Increased Cardiovascular Morbidity and Mortality:
  • Chronic sleep deprivation is linked to higher rates of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, including conditions such as coronary heart disease and stroke3 4 5 8.
  • Both short and long sleep durations are associated with increased risks of cardiovascular events and mortality in individuals with coronary artery disease10.
• Impact of Sleep Quality:
  • Poor sleep quality and non-restorative sleep are associated with a higher risk of recurrent cardiac events, particularly in women with coronary heart disease7.
  • Insomnia and sleep loss are linked to increased cortisol levels, decreased immunity, and higher markers of sympathetic activity, contributing to cardiovascular disease development9.
• Healthy Sleep Patterns:
  • Adherence to a healthy sleep pattern, which includes adequate sleep duration and quality, is associated with a lower risk of heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases4 5.

Is lack of sleep bad for your heart?

Raphael Vallat has answered Near Certain

An expert from University of California, Berkeley in Sleep Research, Neuroscience, Neuroimaging

Not even mentioning the huge toll of sleep apnea on cardiovascular health, there is an increasing amount of studies showing that in healthy adults, and after adjusting for traditional cardiovascular risk factors (smoking, BMI..), short sleep duration and/or fragmented sleep is causally linked with cardiovascular disease. While the exact mechanism(s) are still relatively unknown, recent findings in mice have shown that disrupted sleep increases inflammatory-related processes, thus promoting atherosclerosis (the narrowing and hardening of arteries). In humans, large cohort studies have consistently reported that poor sleep quality and short sleep duration are associated with increased atherosclerotic plaque burden and a greater risk of developing or dying of coronary heart disease and stroke (relative risks 1.48 and 1.15 respectively, see this meta-analysis).

I believe there is now a clear consensus that short sleep duration is emerging as an important causal factor for cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, a recent meta-analysis provided “preliminary evidence for a role for sleep extension to improve cardiometabolic outcomes” (Henst et al. 2019), suggesting that increasing sleep duration may in turn lead to a better cardiovascular health.

References

• McAlpine, C. S., Kiss, M. G., Rattik, S., He, S., Vassalli, A., Valet, C., … Swirski, F. K. (2019). Sleep modulates haematopoiesis and protects against atherosclerosis. Nature.
• Lutsey, P. L., McClelland, R. L., Duprez, D., Shea, S., Shahar, E., Nagayoshi, M., … Redline, S. (2015). Objectively measured sleep characteristics and prevalence of coronary artery calcification: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Sleep study. Thorax, 70(9), 880–887.
• Cappuccio, F. P., Cooper, D., D’Elia, L., Strazzullo, P., & Miller, M. A. (2011). Sleep duration predicts cardiovascular outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. European Heart Journal, 32(12), 1484–1492.
• Domínguez, F., Fuster, V., Fernández-Alvira, J. M., Fernández-Friera, L., López-Melgar, B., Blanco-Rojo, R., … Ordovás, J. M. (2019). Association of Sleep Duration and Quality With Subclinical Atherosclerosis. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 73(2), 134–144.
• Daghlas, I., Dashti, H. S., Lane, J., Aragam, K. G., Rutter, M. K., Saxena, R., & Vetter, C. (2019). Sleep Duration and Myocardial Infarction. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 74(10), 1304–1314.
• Henst, R. H. P., Pienaar, P. R., Roden, L. C., & Rae, D. E. (2019). The effects of sleep extension on cardiometabolic risk factors: A systematic review. Journal of Sleep Research, 28(6), e12865.