Host Amber Smith: Here's some expert advice from Dr. Debanik Chaudhuri from Upstate Medical University. Does bedtime affect heart disease risk?
Host Amber Smith: There is a clear signal from clinical trials that heart attacks tend to happen early in the morning. Sudden cardiac death also tends to happen early in the morning. There are studies on platelet reactivity, even when patients are on certain anti-platelet agents, which show that platelets are stickier between 5:00 AM and 10:00 AM than at other times, especially on certain medications. So there is a circadian diurnal variation of people's predisposition, predilection, vulnerability to heart attacks, if you will. And one of the things on that same study, what the author suggested was that if you're sleeping late, you're also waking up late, and the early morning sun is supposed to be one that resets the circadian clock, and you're missing that. So that clock is perennially disturbed, and that may have some impact on the way physiology reacts to that. You've been listening to Dr. Debanik Chaudhuri from the department of cardiology at Upstate Medical University.