Dr Dayna Johnson Discusses Link Between Poor Sleep, Cardiovascular Health

There are different pathways by which sleep contributes to cardiovascular disease, and these include hormone secretion, which connects to diabetes, and sympathetic nervous activity, which can increase blood pressure; sleep health is connected through these pathways to both traditional cardiovascular risk factors and total cardiovascular disease, explains Dayna Johnson, PhD, MPH, MSW, MS, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in this interview from SLEEP 2023.

Transcript

How are poor sleep health and poor cardiovascular health interrelated?

We've seen a lot of progress in this area. In the last year, the American Heart Association has changed their platform, which was previously the Life’s Simple 7 to Life’s Essential 8—so really recognizing how important sleep is to cardiovascular health. So in the epidemiologic literature, we see that people who have a shorter sleep duration, poor sleep quality, they have a higher prevalence of hypertension, also diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and a higher rate of mortality.

There's different pathways by which sleep can contribute to cardiovascular disease. Some of the pathways include hormone secretion, so around insulin and glucose secretion, which connects to diabetes, which is associated with total cardiovascular disease. And then there's also pathways through the sympathetic nervous activity—which can lead to an increase in blood pressure—also is related to hypertension.

These different dimensions of sleep health are connected through these different pathways to traditional cardiovascular risk factors and to total cardiovascular disease.