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Skimping on Sleep Is Bad for the Heart
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Douglas W. Morrison
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Dec 24, 2008 12:38 PST
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Skimping on Sleep Is Bad for the Heart: U.S. Study
Just One Hour of Additional Sleep May Help Safeguard Arteries
By Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters
CHICAGO
Just one extra hour of sleep a day appears to lower the risk of
developing calcium deposits in the arteries, a precursor to heart
disease, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The finding adds to a growing list of health consequences -- including
weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure -- linked to getting too
little sleep.
"We found that people who on average slept longer were at reduced risk
of developing new coronary artery calcifications over five years," said
Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago Medical Center, whose
study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"It was surprisingly strong," Lauderdale said in a telephone interview.
Calcium deposits in the coronary arteries are considered a precursor of
future heart disease. "It's a very early marker of future risk," she
said.
Unlike other studies looking at the risks of getting too little sleep,
which use people's own estimates of their sleep patterns, Lauderdale's
team set out to measure actual sleep patterns.
They fitted 495 people aged 35 to 47 with sophisticated wrist bands that
tracked subtle body movements. Information from these recorders was fed
into a computer program that was able to detect actual sleep patterns.
The team used special computed tomography, or CT, scans to assess the
buildup of calcium inside heart arteries, performing one scan at the
start of the study and one five years later.
After accounting for other differences such as age, gender, race,
education, smoking and risk for sleep apnea, the team found sleep
duration appeared to play a significant role in the development of
coronary artery calcification.
SLEEP MATTERS
About 12 percent of the people in the study developed artery
calcification during the five-year study period. Among those who had
slept less than five hours a night, 27 percent had developed artery
calcification.
That dropped to 11 percent among those who slept five to seven hours,
and to 6 percent among those who slept more than seven hours a night.
Lauderdale said it is not clear why this difference occurred in people
who slept less, but they had some theories. Because blood pressure tends
to fall off during sleep, it could be that people who slept longer had
lower blood pressure over a 24-hour period.
Or, it could be related to reduced exposure to the stress hormone
cortisol, which is decreased during sleep.
Or it may be some unidentified process.
"It's something of a mystery," Lauderdale said.
Kathy Parker, a sleep researcher from the University of Rochester's
School of Nursing in New York, said the study underscores the role sleep
plays in health.
"People think that sleep doesn't matter but clearly it does. Sleep
deprivation is a public health problem and studies such as this show how
increasing sleep duration can have tremendously positive effects,"
Parker, who was not involved in the research, said in a statement.
Lauderdale said her findings should be confirmed by others, but said
many studies point to the need for at least six hours of sleep a night.
Douglas W. Morrison
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