Children and teenagers who go to sleep earlier and sleep longer may be at a lower risk of developing high blood pressure, according to new NHLBI-funded research published in Pediatrics.
Commonly thought of as a disease of adults, an estimated 4% of children have hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure. Now, a new study finds that how well a child sleeps may matter for their health. Researchers recruited 539 patients ages 4-22 who were referred to pediatric kidney clinics because of high blood pressure readings. The study participants documented when they went to bed and got up in the morning. They also wore ambulatory blood pressure monitoring devices, which took readings every 20 minutes while they were awake and every 30 minutes during sleep.
The researchers found that sleeping longer was associated with better daytime blood pressure. Every extra hour of sleep duration was associated with reduced odds of hypertension. Staying up late was associated with worse daytime blood pressure. The association held regardless of sex, age, BMI, or day of the week.
The findings suggest that “interventions to optimize sleep duration and sleep onset could serve as a…therapy to improve blood pressure and reduce the burden of pediatric hypertension and its associated complications,” according to the study authors.