nervous system<\/a> and hormones. What we found is that the timing of these systems’ daily rhythm may be just as important as the rhythm itself.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Dr. Anita Layton, professor of Applied Mathematics at Waterloo and Canada 150 Research Chair Laureate in Mathematical Biology and Medicine<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Together, these systems’ internal clocks help regulate blood pressure throughout the day and night. Until now, little was known about how differences in timing between these systems might affect cardiovascular health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Using a sophisticated computer model of the human body, Layton and her team conducted a series of virtual experiments to examine how changes in these biological rhythms influence blood pressure during sleep. The model let researchers adjust individual systems one at a time, something difficult to do in laboratory or clinical studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers discovered that weakening the kidney’s daily rhythm had only a modest effect on nighttime blood pressure. However, delaying that rhythm by just a few hours was enough to turn a healthy blood-pressure pattern into a potentially harmful non-dipping pattern.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The effect was strongest in people with higher salt intake and in those who are more sensitive to salt, two factors already linked to high blood pressure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This is a modelling study, so it does not yet tell people to change when they eat salt or take blood-pressure medication,” said Layton. “But it identifies a mechanism that can now be tested experimentally and clinically and may ultimately help us better understand and treat nighttime hypertension and non-dipping blood pressure.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study,\u00a0Temporal misalignment of renal sodium transport promotes non-dipping\u00a0blood pressure phenotypes, was published in\u00a0PLOS ONE.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Layton, A. T. (2026). Temporal misalignment of renal sodium transport promotes non-dipping blood pressure phenotypes. PLOS One. DOI: 10.1371\/journal.pone.0355222.\u00a0https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0355222<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most people’s blood pressure falls by 10 to 20 per cent while they sleep, giving the heart and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4208,3554,14461,163,3247,823,85,46,3857,4788,1690],"class_list":["post-626168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-blood","tag-blood-pressure","tag-blood-vessels","tag-health","tag-heart","tag-heart-disease","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kidney","tag-sleep","tag-stroke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}