The Australian scientists' experiment involved more than 70,000 men and women who were followed for more than eight years. Before the observation period, the volunteers wore a device for a week to assess their daily activity, which helped create a sleep regularity index. After seven days, the participants were assigned to one of three groups: regular sleep with an index above 87, moderate with an index between 72 and 87, and irregular with an index below 72.
Before drawing conclusions, the scientists compared the results with other important factors, such as smoking, coffee and alcohol consumption, mental and physical health, shift work and other criteria.
It turned out that irregular sleep increased the risk of cardiovascular diseases by 26%, and moderate sleep by 8%, writes New Atlas. Such people were more likely to have strokes, heart attacks, develop heart failure and other diseases.
It is important to note that even when the condition of healthy sleep duration, which is 7-9 hours per day, was met, the risks remained if a person went to bed and got up at different times.
"It is not enough to just get enough sleep. Regular periods of sleep are very important," the authors emphasized.
The results of this study are supported by other data. For example, scientists have previously found that even small disruptions in circadian rhythms disrupt metabolism. Thus, shifts of just a few hours led to negative consequences for several days.
