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 “Many people, up to one third or one fourth of the general
population, suffer from inadequate sleep – either insufficient
duration of sleep or poor quality of sleep,” said co-lead author Dr.
Chan-Won Kim of Kangbuk Samsung Hospital of Sungkyunkwan University
School of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea.
Several studies have linked inadequate sleep with an increased risk
of heart attack and stroke, but other conditions like depression or
obesity could influence this association, Kim told Reuters Health by
email.
“In contrast, we studied if sleep of inadequate duration or quality
would be linked to early markers of heart disease in asymptomatic
healthy adults free of heart disease,” Kim said.
For the study, more than 47,000 men and women, age 42 on average,
completed a sleep questionnaire and had tests to detect lesions of
calcium and plaque in the artery leading to the heart, an early sign
of disease, and arterial stiffness in the leg, a sign of vascular
aging.
According to their questionnaires, the participants’ average sleep
duration was 6.4 hours per night, and about 84 percent said their
sleep quality was “good.” The researchers considered those who got
five hours or less per night to be “short” sleepers, and those who
got nine or more hours to be “long” sleepers.
Short sleepers had 50 percent more calcium in their coronary
arteries than those who slept for seven hours per night, according
to the results in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
Long sleepers had 70 percent more calcium than those who slept seven
hours.
“The calcium score obtained by computerized tomography scan is a
very good measure of calcium buildup in the coronary arteries
reflecting coronary atherosclerosis,” Kim said. “The higher the
coronary calcium score, the greater the risk of having a heart
attack in the future.”
Those who reported poor sleep quality also tended to have more
coronary calcium and more arterial stiffness.
In a 2013 study, people who tended to get less than six hours of
sleep nightly were more likely to have high blood pressure, high
cholesterol, diabetes and to be obese (see Reuters Health story of
November 6, 2013 here:
http://reut.rs/1gVvsW2).
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“Adults with poor sleep quality have stiffer arteries than those who
sleep seven hours a day or had good sleep quality,” co-lead author
Dr. Yoosoo Chang of the Center for Cohort Studies at Kangbuk Samsun
Hospital said in a statement accompanying the study. “Overall, we
saw the lowest levels of vascular disease in adults sleeping seven
hours a day and reporting good sleep quality.”
Short sleepers were more likely than others to be older, have
depression, type 2 diabetes or to be smokers.
“The associations of too short or too long sleep duration and of
poor sleep quality with early indicators of heart disease, such as
coronary calcium and arterial stiffness, provides strong support to
the increasing body of evidence that links inadequate sleep with an
increased risk of heart attacks,” Kim said.
The study does not prove that too little sleep is a cause of early
arterial disease, rather than a sign of it or of other medical
problems.
“It is still not clear if inadequate sleep is the cause or the
consequence of ill health,” but good sleep hygiene, including
avoiding electronic media at bedtime, should be part of a healthy
lifestyle, Kim said.
“For doctors, it can be helpful to evaluate sleep duration and sleep
quality when assessing the health status of their patients,” Kim
said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1MeJhmK Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and
Vascular Biology, online September 10, 2015.
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