Why going to sleep during the 'golden hour' could save your life

If we go to sleep much later - or earlier - than we are used to it messes up our internal body clock or circadian rhythm. Photo / 123RF

The quality and quantity of our slumber plays an incredibly important part in every aspect of our health.

It's doesn't surprise me that a new study published this week has pinpointed a "golden hour" between 10pm and 11pm as the sweet spot for going to sleep.

The study, based on data from more than 88,000 participants of the UK Biobank and published in the European Heart Journal – Digital Health, found that those who dozed off between 10pm and 10.59pm had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke than those who dozed off earlier or later, but why should that be so?

I would suggest that it's because around 80 per cent of the population is genetically programmed to feel sleepy in that golden hour and to wake up around eight hours later, between 6am and 7am and, in order to stay healthy, we need to sleep in sync with our natural circadian rhythms, our sleep cycle.

Of course, there are people who fall outside these norms, the owls who feel sleepy at midnight, which, surprisingly, the study didn't mention. For those people there will be no advantage in shifting their bedtime to hit this earlier "sweet spot". The same goes for the natural larks who are happiest going to bed and getting up a bit earlier; again, they should stick with their natural sleep pattern.

This is far from the first study to show how sensitive we are to sleep timing. Or how important it is to stick to the same sleep/wake cycle on a daily basis. That's because our internal body clock is synchronised by external factors, primarily by the rise and fall of the sun.

When we wake up the light hits our eyes and it synchronises our body to the time zone we are in. I like to say that humans are solar powered because we are attuned to light and dark cycles and anything that disrupts that will throw our body clock out.

If we go to sleep much later – or earlier – than we are used to it messes up our internal body clock or circadian rhythm. For example, in Covid lockdown, lots of us were watching Netflix or glued to social media and going to bed later, which pushed our circadian rhythm out of sync leading to more disturbed sleep.

One global experiment that shows this is the spike in heart attacks we see when the clocks go forward in spring, with a 24 per cent jump in heart attacks the day after. This is because we've lost one hour of sleep and that's because of the confusion caused to our internal body clock.

But why is disturbed sleep linked to a greater risk of heart disease and stroke? There are lots of links between sleep disturbance and heart disease. One of the most obvious is that disturbed sleep increases your blood pressure.

The purpose of sleep is to activate your parasympathetic nervous system leading to relaxation, growth and repair, recovery and immunity.

But when you are sleep deprived you're pushed into a state of sympathetic dominance. So basically, fight or flight. You'll see stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline skyrocket. Your heart rate shoots up and so does your blood pressure. If you keep that up for any length of time it will increase wear and tear on the arteries, which increases your risk of a heart attack.

We also know that sleep plays a fundamental role in insulin regulation – that's the hormone that controls our blood sugar – so lack of sleep can lead to changes in insulin sensitivity. There was some great research that shows as little as one night without sleep can lead to a kind of pre-diabetes, so that the insulin wasn't clearing out the glucose in the most effective way. We know that diabetes increases the risk of heart disease and stroke since having too much sugar in your bloodstream can damage the blood vessels.

Sleep also plays a fundamental role in cleaning up our arteries. It could be that disturbed sleep increases our risk of atherosclerosis, where the arteries become plugged with plaques.

According to the research, women appeared to be at even greater risks of heart attack, through disturbed sleep, which is likely down to the age group the study looked at; ages 43 to 74. The majority of women in this age group would have gone through menopause, increasing their risk of cardiovascular disease.

But it's not just heart disease and stroke that are affected by body clock disturbance, or disturbed sleep. Sleep plays an incredibly important part in every aspect of our health, as recent research shows.

So what can we do to get the best quality sleep? First and foremost you need to keep to regular sleep/wake times.

The body clock is a wonderful timepiece, which is kept in sync by external factors.

The problem is if you constantly chop and change your bedtime and your wake time, your body clock doesn't know what's happening.

You need a really good bedtime routine. In the last hour before going to bed, do some simple things like switching off the telly and all devices like laptops and phones. That will reduce mental and emotional stimulation as well as the blue light stimulus that comes with it. If you're looking at work emails that will fire up your mental capacity and push you further into wakefulness.

You want to be engaging in relaxing activities, like gentle stretching, listening to some calming music or reading a nice book, and dim the lights.

In the morning you need to do the exact opposite. Morning light is essential because that tells our body clock the day has begun and its time for biological day processes to switch on and for the night processes to switch off. So switch on a bright light when you get up, while a 10-minute walk at 10am will improve our mental health and our sleep no end.

Since 80 per cent of the population need between seven and eight hours of sleep, if you're going to bed between 10 and 11pm, you're going to be getting up between 6am and 7am. But again, that's influenced by genetics. Some people will need a little bit less, some people will, want to get up a little later, in the same way that some people might want to naturally go to bed earlier.

People often worry about waking in the night, but it's perfectly normal to wake up several times a night in sync with our sleep cycles which last between 90 minutes and two hours. Most of us aren't even aware of it but if you are I tell people to stay in bed. Even if you can't fall back to sleep straight away there are still benefits from resting.

But if fragmented sleep is becoming a problem it's usually because people are worrying and ruminating and of course worrying about not being able to sleep can feed into a vicious cycle. At the Sleep School, I tell people to label their thoughts "Oh there's that work thought' or "Oh there's that health worry", for example, as it creates a bit of distance and can stop you from getting caught up in the cycle of worry.

You want to come back into a state of quiet wakefulness. So you might notice the touch of the duvet on your toes to help anchor your mind's attention into the moment. Or you might use the breath as an anchor. But this is not designed to get you to sleep – it's just allowing you to let go of those thoughts and to let your body rest.

As told to Sharon Walker

Dr Guy Meadows is co-founder and clinical lead at Sleep School.