October 31st, 2008
Your heart needs sleep
There’s a larger message in the latest silly-season study showing that heart attacks go down on the weekend after we “fall behind” to end Daylight Savings Time.
Your heart needs sleep. (Picture from Wikimedia.) Oh, and set your clock back Saturday night.
As study author Richard Ljung wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine:
Studies are warranted to examine the possibility that a more stable weekly pattern of waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night or a somewhat later wake-up time on Monday might prevent some acute myocardial infarctions.
As a hypertension sufferer myself I know what he’s talking about. I always monitor my heart rate during morning workouts and my numbers are much better when I’ve had a good night’s sleep than when I toss-and-turn all night.
It is possible to make up for this. There are days when my body says sleep as early as noon. This, too, happens mostly after a bad night’s sleep.
My dad had his first heart attack at age 47. I’m now 53 and so far, knock on wood. But it has taken care, exercise, sleep, and drugs that frankly did not exist when he was my age to get me through.
So next time you need an excuse to get an extra hour in the morning and get to work late, just hand the boss this Forbes article. Tell him you were working to lower his health care premium.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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