Your Body’s Superpower — How to Improve Your Health Without Going to the Gym

Did you know that you can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke all without going to the gym or changing your diet?
That’s right — you can lower your risk of disease just by improving your quality of sleep. Sleeping behaviors can impact your risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke independently of other risk factors like diet and exercise.
A study of almost 400,000 people, who were initially free from cardiovascular disease, had their sleep evaluated, with the highest scores having early chronotypes (the propensity to wake up early), 7–8 hours of sleep, rare to no insomnia, no snoring, and no frequent excessive day-time sleepiness.
Compared to those with the lowest scores, those with the highest scores had a 35% reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, 34% reduced risk of coronary heart disease, and 43% reduced risk of stroke, while unhealthy sleep behaviors were associated with a 10–40% increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
With a median follow up of 8.5 years, this study showed that having an early chronotype, adequate sleep duration (between 6 and 9 hours), no insomnia, and no frequent daytime sleepiness were all independently associated with a significantly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease — 7%, 12%, 8%, 15% respectively.
Of these factors, having an early chronotype, a 6-to-9-hour duration, and no insomnia were also associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, though only sleep duration was associated with an increased risk of stroke. [1]
Sleep duration can also affect blood pressure and increase your risk of hypertension — a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Interestingly, both ends of the spectrum have been associated with cardiovascular disease — getting less than 6 hours a night and getting more than 10 both increase your risk, though the evidence supporting sleeping too long is less compelling.
The lowest risk for hypertension was seen in those sleeping between 7 and 8 hours, while those sleeping less than 6 hours a night are 20–32% more likely to develop hypertension. Furthermore, people aged 32 to 59 sleeping less than 5 hours a night are 60% more likely to develop hypertension as compared to their peers sleeping 7 to 8 hours. However, older adults (60 to 86 years old) saw no relation between sleep duration and hypertension. [2]
Likewise, having several poor sleep habits, particularly insomnia and sleeping for too few hours, can compound your risk of cardiovascular disease, though most studies focus on sleep behaviors individually, so there is not much evidence on how having multiple poor sleep habits compound on each other.
Nearly 10% of the total cardiovascular events that happened during the course of this study could be attributed to poor sleep patterns. The increased risk from poor sleep patterns were coupled with genetic risk factors for some, putting them at the highest risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.
Each sleep factor could individually explain 0.5% to 4% of the population risk for developing cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke. [1] This is especially significant when you consider that only 48% of the US adult population gets 7–9 hours of sleep. 26% sleep 6–7 hours and another 20% sleep less than 6 hours a night! [2]
So even if you struggle to make it to the gym or find it hard to make time to meal prep, you can still reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, just by going to bed on time.
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