Going to bed at the same time every night can help lower your blood pressure, a new study suggests.
Researchers report that participants in a small study experienced significant decreases in their overall blood pressure, as well as their nighttime readings, after adjusting their schedules to go to bed at approximately the same time every evening.
“This [regular bedtime] may be a simple, yet low-risk, adjunctive strategy to control [blood pressure] in many people with hypertension,” the study authors wrote.
The researchers recently published their findings in the journal Sleep Advances.
The researchers noted their study involved only 11 people and was done over a two-week period with no control group as a contrast. They acknowledged their hypothesis needs to be tested in larger randomized controlled trials.
Experts not involved in the study say that despite the limited size of this study, the results were significant enough to warrant attention.
“This is a useful study in that such a simple intervention can have such a significant impact,” said Cheng-Han Chen, MD, an interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, CA.
“While limited by its non-randomized design and small study cohort, the trial’s results highlight potential for improving hypertension control through a low-cost, easily scalable intervention, and should encourage further investigation through randomized clinical trials,” added Brian Brady, MD, a nephrologist and a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford University.