How sleep affects cholesterol levels

Does Sleep Affect Cholesterol Levels? Find Out The Correlation & Stay Healthy!

In this age of fast food and sedentary lives, it is becoming increasingly difficult to have good health. Therefore, people take various measures to try and ensure physical fitness. Among these, one of the most important is maintaining correct cholesterol levels in your body.

Despite all your efforts to exercise and diet, there might not be much difference if you have an unhealthy sleep cycle. Read on to understand how your cholesterol levels are affected by your sleep.

What are the different kinds of Cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a waxy fat-like substance that helps with the smooth running of the body. It is carried in the bloodstream as spherical particles called Lipoproteins. But cholesterol isn’t all bad news. The human body has two main types; good (HDL) and bad (LDL).

High LDL or Low-Density Lipoprotein levels cause build-up in the walls of your blood vessels called “plaque”. This plaque restricts the free flow of blood from and to the heart resulting in a weak heart function which might even lead to a heart attack.

On the contrary, high HDL or High-Density Lipoprotein levels prevent this build-up by absorbing all the cholesterol, breaking it down, and flushing it out of your body through the liver.

Total Cholesterol is the sum of all types of cholesterol in your body. Non-HDL Cholesterol is total cholesterol minus HDL. Triglycerides are another type of fat that can increase the risk of heart disease, especially in women.

What are the ideal cholesterol levels?

To have a healthy system, an adult body (age 20 or older) should have the following cholesterol levels:

HDL: 40 mg/ dL or higher for men and 50 mg/dL or higher for women.

LDL: Less than 100 mg/ dL for both men and women.

Total cholesterol: 125 to 200 mg/ dL for both men and women.

How does sleep affect cholesterol levels?

Studies show that both a lack of sleep and oversleeping impact the cholesterol levels in the human body. As per the results, too much or too little sleep can affect different sexes differently.

For women with less than 6 hours or more than 8 hours of sleep every night, the HDL levels decreased & the triglyceride levels increased. However, LDL levels were not affected due to either of the sleep conditions.

Whereas for men, LDL levels increased on having less than 6 hours of sleep every night. But the triglyceride and HDL levels weren’t significantly affected by the quantity of sleep.

It was also found that lower levels of LDL were related to the people who snore in their sleep.

Too much or too little?

Ideally, an adult must have a sleep time of 7 to 9 hours because while sleeping, your body repairs itself from all the stress & prepares for another day. And this period should lie between 10 pm and 7 am.

Depending upon your work and life, fix your sleep time and stick to it. You will find that having a regular sleep cycle improves your energy levels substantially and the overall well-being of your body.

Whether sleep has a direct impact on cholesterol levels or not, it is always healthy to maintain a good sleep pattern for holistic wellness. Else, it can mess up your blood levels and wreak havoc on the body. In addition to sleep, eating heart-healthy food, doing physical exercise, quitting smoking, and managing stress also play a crucial role in maintaining correct cholesterol levels.