SA corporate executives who say they don’t get enough sleep may be more vulnerable to obesity and other conditions that increase their risk of heart attacks and strokes, new research shows.
The study, which analysed the annual health risk assessments of more than 1,500 executives and senior managers from 56 companies across a range of industries is the first of its kind conducted in SA and adds to a growing body of research on the health risks associated with insufficient sleep.
The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Preventative Medicine, found consistently sleeping less than seven to nine hours a night was associated with a higher body mass index and waist circumference, with intriguing differences between men and women.
“For men, we found the association between short sleep duration and adverse cardiometabolic health and high BMI (body mass index) was significant, irrespective of occupation and lifestyle factors like alcohol consumption, smoking, and physical activity,” said the study’s lead author Paula Pienaar, a PhD candidate at UCT and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
“But with women, there was a greater influence from physical activity,” she said. The study found the sleep-BMI relationship did not persist in women when adjusting for lifestyle, suggesting these factors contribute more to the association with increased BMI than sleep alone.
Cardiometabolic diseases are a group of conditions including heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Their weakness is they feel they don’t need to sleep.
— Paula Pienaar, a PhD candidate at UCT and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
“In both men and women, sleep is a pillar of occupational health that needs to be addressed. Women are (generally) less active, so we need interventions to help them balance their lifestyle so they can have time to sleep enough and be more physically active,” she said. Even at senior level women typically bore most of the responsibility for childcare and running their households, leaving little time for sleep or exercise, she said.
By contrast, many male executives regarded exercise as part of their to-do list and considered sleep a luxury, she said. “Their weakness is they feel they don’t need to sleep.”
The research drew on anonymised data provided by private hospital group Life Healthcare’s health risk management division, Life Health Solutions, which provides corporate wellness programmes. Altogether 1,160 men and 352 women completed online health risk assessments that included their self-reported sleep and underwent clinical consultations every year from 2016 to 2019. The vast majority of the study participants (85.5%) worked 40 to 60 hours a week, but 10.7% said they worked more than 60 hours a week. None of the participants worked shifts.
“There is a knowledge deficit in understanding sleep: there is a need to create greater awareness around sleep habits and how a lack of positive change correlates to long-term health outcomes for individuals and organisations,” said Life Health Solutions corporate wellness manager Zaheer Hammersley. “Creating a good foundation around sleep behaviour, attitude and habits is of paramount importance.”
Restonic sleep specialist Alison Bentley said the study was important because there relatively little research explored sleep and women. She emphasised that everyone had different sleep needs and it was important to assess an individual’s daytime function to gauge whether they needed more shut-eye.
While most people require seven to nine hours of sleep a night, a small minority function perfectly well on far less, she said. These “short-sleepers” thrive despite sleeping as little as three to four hours a night, she said.
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