If you’re one of the many people who fight to keep their blood pressure lower, a new study may provide you a new tool: more sleep. The study, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, found that getting just one hour more of sleep a night may help people lower their blood pressure.
The small study (22 participants) was conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School. It tracked a group of adults who all slept, on average, seven hours or less a night and had borderline high blood pressure. About half were told to continue their regular sleeping schedules, while 13 were told to sleep an hour earlier than they would normally.
All of the participants wore monitors tracking their blood pressures. They were all subjected to urine and blood tests.
The extended sleep group managed to receive 35 more minutes, on average, of extra sleep. As a consequence, their blood pressure dropped by between eight and 14 mmHg.
The study is the first to find that blood pressure can be brought under control just by catching a few more hours of sleep.