Sleep Now Counts as 8th Heart Health Metric, Columbia Study Shows

For years, doctors have measured heart health the same way: they checked your cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, blood sugar, diet, exercise habits, and whether you smoked. These seven metrics, known as Life's Simple 7, formed the backbone of cardiovascular risk assessment. But last year, the American Heart Association added an eighth. Sleep.

Now a team of researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health has published the first rigorous evidence that this addition makes sense. Their study, appearing in the Journal of the American Heart Association, examined roughly 2,000 middle-aged and older adults from a long-running cardiovascular study called MESA. The researchers looked at how sleep patterns—not just how long people slept, but how consistently, how efficiently, and whether they experienced daytime drowsiness or breathing problems—predicted future heart disease risk. What they found was striking: sleep health mattered. It mattered a lot.

The numbers tell a sobering story about American sleep. Sixty-three percent of the study participants slept fewer than seven hours per night. Thirty percent slept less than six. Nearly four in ten had night-to-night swings in how long they slept. A quarter varied wildly in when they went to bed and woke up. Fourteen percent reported excessive daytime sleepiness. More than a third had high insomnia symptoms. And nearly half had moderate-to-severe sleep apnea, a condition where breathing repeatedly stops during sleep.

What connected these sleep problems was a pattern of cascading health trouble. People who slept too little were more likely to sleep inefficiently—spending less than 85 percent of their time in bed actually asleep. They were more likely to have irregular sleep schedules. They were more likely to feel exhausted during the day. And they were significantly more likely to have Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. These are not coincidences. They are the markers of a body under stress, a cardiovascular system working harder than it should.

Nour Makarem, the lead author and an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia, emphasized that the relationship between sleep and heart health goes beyond simple duration. A cardiovascular health score that looked only at how many hours people slept was predictive of future heart disease. But a score that incorporated multiple dimensions of sleep—duration, efficiency, regularity, daytime function, and the presence of sleep disorders—was even more predictive. "Sleep health is integral to heart health," Makarem told Fox News Digital. "An expanded definition of cardiovascular health that includes sleep is more predictive of future heart disease risk."

The ideal target, according to the updated guidelines now called Life's Essential 8, is seven to nine hours nightly for adults. Children need more, depending on age. But achieving that target requires more than just setting an alarm. Makarem stressed the importance of sleep hygiene: maintaining a consistent schedule, even on weekends; using the hour before bed to relax rather than scroll through screens; keeping the bedroom cool, dark, and quiet; and avoiding caffeine, nicotine, and bright light in the evening. "Sleep seems to be the first thing that people squeeze out of their schedules when they are busy," she said. "However, the first step to healthy sleep is making time for sleep."

Dr. Marc Siegel, a Fox News medical contributor, explained the physiology. During sleep, the body releases protective hormones like oxytocin that help the heart repair itself. When awake, especially when stressed, the body floods itself with stress hormones that elevate heart rate and blood pressure, putting strain on the cardiovascular system. Sleep, in other words, is not a luxury. It is a form of maintenance. Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart and a senior author on the American Heart Association's scientific statement on sleep and cardiometabolic risk, called the Columbia study "very informative" and noted that insufficient sleep "doesn't get the respect it deserves as a cardiovascular risk factor." He expressed hope that research like this would shift how society thinks about rest.

The researchers say more work is needed. They want to see clinical trials testing whether screening for sleep problems and teaching people better sleep habits actually reduces heart disease. But the message from this study is already clear: if you want a healthy heart, you need to sleep. Not occasionally. Not when you have time. Every night, for seven to nine hours, with consistency and quality. Your heart depends on it.