Heart rate variability at bedtime predicts subsequent sleep features

Getting enough sleep during the night is important for preventing adverse short- and long-term health outcomes. The sympathetic-parasympathetic autonomic balance, characteristics of the pre-bed time resting period, correlates with sleep efficiency. We investigated in healthy subjects whether Low/High Frequencies (LF/HF) and other Heart Rate Variability (HRV) metrics, extracted in the period immediately before sleep onset, are able to predict quality/architecture sleep parameters in the sample group and in the Evening-/Intermediate-chronotype subgroups. Linear correlations were found between HRV metrics and the investigated quality/architecture sleep parameters. The possibility to predict sleep parameters from the HRV metrics while falling asleep might pave the way to behavioral interventions during the bedtime period to increase the quality of sleep.