How many hours do you sleep in a day? If you've been dozing off for more than you should, you may be at risk of stroke, new study suggests.
Nothing is more comforting than realizing it's a weekend and sleeping for, say, more than 8 hours is perfectly okay. However, based on a new study, that may not be an entirely good idea. Rather, it's a possible indication that you are at risk of developing a stroke.
To be more specific, if you have a habit of sleeping more than the average, the risk of stroke is twice. On the other hand, it's a whopping 4 times if you have a sudden change of sleeping habit--that is, you become someone who sleeps very little to a person who gets over 8 hours.
Senior author Professor Kay-Tee Khaw and researcher Yue Leng embarked on a long-term study that spanned for 9 years. Initially, they had 10,000 Norfolk adults between the ages of 42 and 81 as the subject of the study.
The researchers then surveyed their sleeping habits, particularly their average hours of sleep. Four years after, they repeated the same survey.
During the course of the study, more than 340 of the subjects suffered from a stroke, and based on the analysis, they discovered that there was a strong link between their average hours of sleep and stroke incidence. The risk factor was more obvious among women who were at least 63 years old. They also found an unexplainable relationship between heart disease and long sleeping time.
To further support their findings, the researchers referred to much broader and bigger studies that looked into the effects of long-term sleeping to health, especially the risk of stroke, and found the same consistent message.
In the end, the study's results suggest that if you end up feeling sluggish when you wake up, it's possible that you have been sleeping more than you should. If this goes on, it may be an indicator of your risk and that proper medical intervention should already be performed to manage such risk.
