11/13/2021
Researchers have discovered the best time for you to fall asleep to protect your heart and rest is between 10 and 11 p.m.
A peer-reviewed study published in the European Heart Journal analyzed the sleep and heart patterns of about 88,000 adults for six years.
The data revealed a 12% greater risk for developing cardiovascular disease among those who went to sleep between 11 and 11:59 p.m. and a 25% higher risk among people who fell asleep at midnight or later. Adults who fell asleep earlier than 10 p.m. had a 24% increase in risk.
Researchers factored in the individuals' age, gender, sleep duration, sleep irregularity, being an early bird or a night owl, smoking status, body-mass index, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and socioeconomic status. Overall, they found consistent sleeping at or after midnight increased the person's risk of heart disease.
“The body has a 24-hour internal clock, called circadian rhythm, that helps regulate physical and mental functioning,” David Plans, a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist and co-author of the study, said in a statement to NBC News. “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.”
A common habit of falling asleep after midnight after, say, deciding to stay up longer to binge-watch your favorite streaming show, is called revenge bedtime procrastination, and experts say this decision to sacrifice sleep for leisure time is actually doing more harm than good. And yes, you can die if you don't get enough sleep, since it's vital to your brain functions. As we sleep, various parts of our brain shut down, and that reduced power consumption reduces the swelling across our neurons. Without any sleep, toxins build up in our brain and can kill us within 200 hours.