Health Tips

People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study released two weeks ago.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is know to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17 – year analysis of 10, 000 government workers showed those who cut their sleeping from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7 increased and risk in mortality from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.

The findings highlight a danger in busy modern lifestyles. Francesco Capriccio, Professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Warwick’s medical school, told the annual conference of the British sleep society in Cambridge: “ A third of the population of the Untied Kingdom and over 40 present in the United State and Africa regularly sleep less than five hours a night, so it is not a trivial problem, “ he said. “ The current pressure in society to cut out sleep, in order to squeeze in particularly if you go below five hours.”

Previous research has highlighted the potential heath risks of shift work and disrupted sleep. But the study by Cappuccino and colleagues, which was supported by British government and U.S. funding, is the first to link duration of sleep and mortality rates. The study looked at sleep patterns of participants aged 35-55 years at two points in their lives 1992-93 – and then tracked their mortality rates until 2004.

The results were adjusted to take account of other possible risk factors such as initial age, sex, smoking and alcohol consumption, body mass index, blood pressure and cholesterol. The correlation with cardiovascular risk in those who slept less in the 1990s than in the 1980s was clear but there was also a higher mortality rate in people who increased their sleeping to more than nine hours.

In this case, however, there was no cardiovascular link and Cappuccio said it was possible that longer sleeping could be related to other heath problems such as depression or Cancer- related fatigue. In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that consistently sleeping for about seven hours pre night is optimal for heath,” he said.