ARE you a habitual early riser? You might be at a higher risk of heart disease. Junking the age old mantra that professed waking up early as good for health, a study conducted by Japanese researchers has found that people who regularly wake up before 5 am faced an added risk of developing heart disease. They were found to be also at higher risk of developing high blood pressure/hypertension and stroke.

Announcing the finding at the recently concluded Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies in Cairns, Australia, Japanese physician Mayuko Kadono said his subjects, who woke up before 5 am were 1.7 times more prone to suffering from high BP/hypertension. A two-time increase in the chance of developing hardening of the arteries was also noticed when those in the study woke up regularly at 5 am.

Kadono used 3,017 healthy adults between the ages of 23 and 90 years to study the relationship between time of getting up in the morning and the frequency of developing health problems.

“Rising early to go to work or exercise might not be beneficial to health, but rather a risk for vascular diseases,” said an abstract of the study.

Dr V Mohan Kumar, vice-president of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies, told this newspaper that an adult needs a minimum of six-eight hours of sleep everyday. “People who go to sleep at 10 pm and wake up at 5 am or later should face no problems. Some people wake up late. If those who like to sleep a little more are forced to wake up at 5 am everyday, it naturally leads to stress in the heart causing complications,” Dr Kumar, a former HOD of the department of physiology at AIIMS, said.—Dawn/The Times of India News Service