Proper sleep for 6 to 8 hours every day is vital for a healthy life and heart. Lack of sleep can have a plethora of side effects on the body including on the heart.

Among the heart-healthy habits that could prevent risk of a heart health, a good night’s sleep is perhaps the best one. An ultimate tonic to your heart, a restful sleep can offer an array of benefits for your heart while a broken, interrupted sleep can do the opposite raise risk of heart attack and many other chronic diseases.

Sleep has many stages and the during the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stage, heart rate slows, blood pressure drops, and breathing stabilizes. These changes reduce stress on the heart and allows it to recover from stress that occurs during waking hours. (Also read: Heart health tips: Lifestyle changes to prevent heart attacks)

People who have insomnia or suffer from any other sleep disorder may not be able to spend much time in this non-rapid eye movement stage and the essential repair and rejuvenation work remains incomplete due to which over a period of time, a person with sleep problems may be more susceptible to developing heart diseases than those who are good sleepers.

According to Sleep Foundation, during normal, healthy sleep, blood pressure drops by around 10-20% which is called nocturnal dipping, and this plays a huge role in cardiovascular health. When a person is not able to sleep properly, this nocturnal dipping is absent which means a person’s blood pressure doesn’t go down at night. Studies have found that elevated night-time blood pressure is tied to overall hypertension – which is a risk factor for heart diseases.