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| Lack of sleep linked to increased risk of high blood pressure |
| American Heart Association |
| 2/5/2010 |
| If you're middle age and sleep five hours or less a night, you may be increasing your risk of developing high blood pressure, according to research reported in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. "Sleep allows the heart to slow down and blood pressure to drop for a significant part of the day," said James E. Gangwisch, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "However, people who sleep for only short durations raise their average 24-hour blood pressure and heart rate. This may set up the cardiovascular system to operate at an elevated pressure." Gangwisch said that 24 percent of people ages 32 to 59 who slept for five or fewer hours a night developed hypertension versus 12 percent of those who got seven or eight hours of sleep. Subjects who slept five or fewer hours per night continued to be significantly more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension after controlling for factors such as obesity, diabetes, physical activity, salt and alcohol consumption, smoking, depression, age, education, gender, and ethnicity. Click here for full article |
| Additional Information: http://www.doctorslounge.com/cardiology/articles/hypertension/sleep_research/index.htm |