Sleep Deprivation and too much sleep may Affect Your Heart

Not getting enough sleep has been linked with feeling drowsy, having difficulty focusing, inability to solve problems, and irritability. Chronic sleep deprivation has also been linked to a wide variety of serious health problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Does getting too much sleep have the same risks?
A recent study, published in the February 7 online version of European Heart Journal, looked at data from 15 studies in eight countries, involving nearly 475,000 adults ages 30 and older whose sleep patterns were tracked for up to 25 years. Incidents of heart disease and stroke among all participants were just over 16,000.

The information gained from the study confirmed the link between sleep deprivation and heart disease or stroke. In participants who slept six or fewer hours a night, the chance of developing or dying from heart disease or stroke was 48 percent greater than those who averaged seven or eight hours of sleep per night, the amount of sleep considered in the normal range. Additionally, those who got more than nine hours of sleep per night were also more likely to succumb to heart disease or stroke. This increased association for health risks was true for both men and women.

Researchers noted that the association between longer sleeping hours and an increased risk for heart disease and stroke were based on the participants responses and that they could not rule out that existing health problems requiring more sleep were the link to heart disease and stroke, rather than the longer sleeping time itself.

Most adults need anywhere from 7-8 ½ hours of sleep per night, while younger children (including teens) need more. Experts recommend seeing a medical professional in the case of either too little or too much sleep. Both could be signs of other problems, or pose health risks.

Studies-Sleeping

Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.

Morbidity [or sickness] is also "U-shaped" in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses—with depression, with obesity—and therefore with heart disease—and so forth. But the [ideal amount of sleep] for different health measures isn't all in the same place. Most of the low points are at 7 or 8 hr., but there are some at 6 hr. and even at 9 hr. I think diabetes is lowest in 7-hr. sleepers [for example]. But these measures aren't as clear as the mortality data.

I think we can speculate [about why people who sleep from 6.5 to 7.5 hr. live longer], but we have to admit that we don't really understand the reasons. We don't really know yet what is cause and what is effect. So we don't know if a short sleeper can live longer by extending their sleep, and we don't know if a long sleeper can live longer by setting the alarm clock a bit earlier. We're hoping to organize tests of those questions.

One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is O.K. We've all been told you ought to sleep 8 hr., but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep 8 or 9 hr., so they spend [that amount of time] in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and wake up a lot during the night. Oddly enough, a lot of the problem [of insomnia] is lying in bed awake, worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the U.S., Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you're not sleepy and restricting your time in bed actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and become confident that when they go to bed, they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.