2023-10-20 03:00:00
According to an INSERM study, some cardiovascular accidents might be avoided thanks to optimal sleep. Every parameter counts and can help us reduce risks.
Can better sleep prevent certain cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction or stroke? This is the question that Inserm researchers tried to answer in collaboration with the Vaud University Hospital Center.
In a study published in the European Heart Journal this Friday, October 20, they were interested in the link between the risk of cardiovascular accidents and five components of our sleep: duration, chronotype (being in the morning or evening), frequency of insomnia, excessive daytime sleepiness and sleep apnea.
“Sleep disorders concern us all,” Jean-Philippe Empana, research director at INSERM, explains to BFMTV.com. “We wanted to have a more global vision of sleep, both in quantity and quality, which we tried to relate to the risk of cardiovascular pathologies.”
“Sleep is a public health problem,” adds Aboubakari Nambiema, first author of this work and postdoctoral researcher at Inserm. “Most studies have only worked on a single dimension of sleep (…) but not all of these components.”
60% of cardiovascular accidents are preventable
For this study, they had the participants of 2 surveys complete a questionnaire. One was conducted in Paris and included 10,157 adults aged 50 to 75 and the other was conducted in Switzerland in Lausanne with 6,733 participants over 35 years old, details INSERM.
“You have to imagine that we worked on more than 12,000 subjects, so we mightn’t do what we call polysomnography, a nocturnal recording, so we used questionnaires”, to analyze the sleep of the participants explains Jean- Philippe Empana.
The questionnaire made it possible to determine for each person a score which varies from 0 to 5. And to have an optimal score according to the researchers it was necessary to have “7 to 8 hours of sleep per night, to be a morning person, not to have insomnia , apnea or excessive sleepiness during the day. By combining data from the two surveys, the INSERM teams showed that the higher the score, the lower the risk of cardiovascular accident.
According to INSERM, the risk of cardiovascular pathologies is reduced by 38% for a score of 4 (27% of participants) and 63% for those with the best score of 5 (10% of participants). Which means in other words that “nearly 60% of cardiovascular accidents might potentially be avoided if individuals all had an optimal sleep score”, summarize the researchers.
However, “only 10% of the population had an optimal score. This shows that in terms of prevention and promotion of health linked to sleep there is a lot of work to be done”, also believes Jean-Philippe Empana.
Solutions for bad sleepers
“Compared to existing studies, we were also able to look at how these sleep disorders evolved over time and how these changes were associated with the risk of cardiovascular events,” says the research director.
What to do if you have a bad score? According to INSERM it is never too late to reduce risks:
“Even if, initially, you had a mediocre score, improving your sleep score over time reduces the risk of cardiovascular pathologies,” explains Jean-Philippe Empana.
In detail, INSERM indicates that “this risk decreased by 16% for each score point gained over time, regardless of the component of the score that was improved”. “Each one seems to be as important as the others”, specify Aboubakari Nambiema.
“The message is not to tell people to go from 0 to 5 (…) but already if we improve one dimension of our sleep we reduce our risk of cardiovascular pathologies by around 20%,” continues Jean-Philippe Empana . “It’s substantial.”
For the two researchers we interviewed, this study therefore highlights the need to be aware of the importance of good quality sleep. They also believe that this type of questionnaire might be a tool used by health professionals.
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