A new study has found that the lack of adequate sleep may significantly increase the risk of having heart attack and stroke. Now, growing body of research is reiterating on the importance of promoting adequate sleep to prevent serious health problems.
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the largest-physician-based organization for sleep medicine, has issued their recommendations for how much sleep a person really needs. Based on their research, adults should have at least seven hours of sleep every night.
With the fast paced life today, most jobs offer graveyard shifts. This poses serious risks for workers who do not get ample sleep like nurses and doctors. In fact, an estimated 50 to 70 million people in the United States alone have some form of sleep disorder, reports CNN.
In the latest study conducted by Professor Valery Gafarov and colleagues from the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Novosibirsk, Russia and presented to EuroHeartCare 2015 conference of the European Society of Cardiology, aimed to research on whether poor sleep may be linked to heart attack and stroke.
"Sleep disorders are very closely related to the presence of cardiovascular diseases. However, until now there has not been a population-based cohort study examining the impact of sleep disorders on the development of a heart attack or stroke," Prof. Gafarov told Medical News Today.
The study was initiated years back. In 1994, they enrolled 657 men in a nationally representative cohort. Their ages ranged from 25 to 64 and were residents of Russia. At the start of the study, the researches utilized the Jenkins Sleep Scale to determine sleep frequency and problems among the participants as they had no history of any disease.
From then on, they assessed the prevalence of heart attack and stroke among the respondents over the next 14 years. Subsequently, they found out that men who had sleeping disorders have a 2 to 2.6 times greater risk of heart attack and 1.5 to 4 times higher risk of stroke among those who have no sleeping difficulties.
Also, they found out that those who did not sleep well, the risk of health problems were higher for those who were divorced or widowed. The rate is higher than those who worked in heavy medium manual labor.
"Sleep is not a trivial issue. In our study it was associated with double the risk of a heart attack and up to four times the risk of stroke. Poor sleep should be considered a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease along with smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet. Guidelines should add sleep as a risk factor to recommendations for preventing cardiovascular disease," reiterates Prof. Gafarov.
