More or Less Than Seven Hours Sleep Could Lead To Several Diseases

This could be a breakthrough in studies that link sleep and physiology. A recent study suggests that sleeping more or less than seven hours could lead to several diseases including cardiovascular problem, which is one of the most common conditions that lead to death in the United States.

People who sleep for less than five hours a day, including nap-time, are actually doubly likely to be diagnosed by angina coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke, indicates the research that has been published in the journal “Sleep” and conducted by scientists at West Virginia University’s (WVU) faculty of medicine. The study indicates that sleeping for more than seven hours increases risk for cardiovascular disease. People who slept for nine hours or longer were one and half times more likelier to develop the disease.

The most vulnerable age-group was adults under 60 years of age who slept for five hours or less. Their risks of getting the disease was three-fold more than people who sleep for only about seven hours. Women who didn’t sleep so much also ran a similar risk. Hence, sleeping too much or too little is linked to heart attack and stroke, while short duration of sleep was associated with angina.

Another study published in “Sleep” indicates that a long lie-in sometimes can help people who cannot avoid but sleep less. In this study it was found that 142 adults whose sleep was constrained for five days had trouble focusing. But a night of recovery sleep, the responsiveness and alertness of the participants increased many-fold. Most improvements were seen in those participants who slept for four hours a night a week but had a ten-hour recovery sleep. This study was conducted by David Dinges, head of the sleep and chronobiology unit at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine.

A study on the nexus between sleep and cardiovascular disease led by Anoop Shankar, associate professor at WVU’s department of community medicine, that the results were more-or-less the same even though the participants were of different age, sex, race or body-type and had different habits. Even if the participants’ history about illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure and the like were removed, the nexus between too much or too little sleep and cardiovascular problems remained.

source: thefirstreporter