Our healthcare industries spend billions of dollars, pounds and euros every year on heart health - and yet the best form of prevention is also the cheapest, says a heart specialist.
Dr James Januzzi from the Massachusetts General Hospital reckons a good night's sleep is the best medicine to keep our hearts healthy.
His comments follow on from a study from the University of Pennsylvania that involved 32 participants who were deprived of sleep. Their heart rates changed, and became variable, which is the first signal of a possible heart condition, researchers found.
Dr Januzzi says it is yet another example of the 'back to basics' approach being adopted by heart specialists, who reckon that simple lifestyle choices such as a good diet and exercise can have a bigger impact than drugs on heart health.
The new findings from Pennsylvania mirror the discoveries from earlier studies, which found that a significant proportion of patients with coronary heart disease also suffered from insomnia.
(Source: Proceedings of the 21st annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies).