New Findings Reveal How Lack of Sleep Raises Cardiovascular Risk
Many studies have shown that lack of sleep raises cardiovascular risk. But how exactly? Two recent findings suggest that poor sleep does it by increasing the risk of engaging in behaviours that put a person at risk of serious health problems and actually change the way the body gets rid of cholesterol, which in turn increases the risk of heart disease.
The first finding by the University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and the University of Arizona College of Medicine showed that people who slept six or fewer hours a night were 45 percent more likely to smoke tobacco than those who slept seven to eight hours a night. These people also reported having more sedentary habits and eater fewer fruits and vegetables.
While cigarette smoking is mostly associated with lung cancer and respiratory disease, it is also linked to heart disease. The reason is that the chemicals in tobacco damage blood cells in the heart as well as the blood vessels. Over time, this increases the risk of heart attack, heart failure and stroke.
Night owls also tend to have poor health behaviours.
In the study, participants who categorised themselves as ‘morning types’ reported less time spent watching TV, spending 18 minutes less on their computers, and eating about a sixth of a serving more fruit and tenth of a serving more vegetables per day on average, compared with the night owls. It also showed a stronger link between being night owls and having a sedentary lifestyle.
The other research, conducted in Finland, found that even though night owls engage in healthy behaviours like exercising, eating right and not smoking, poor sleep may still be hurting their health by raising cholesterol levels.
The said new findings are some of the first data to pinpoint exactly how sleep loss affects cholesterol, a key component of cardiovascular disease risk, said study co-author Vilma Aho, a sleep researcher in the Tarja Porkka-Heiskanen (Sternberg) lab at the University of Helsinki. She explained that lack of sleep increases the levels of high-density lipoproteins or ‘good cholesterol’ by 10 per cent.
The study also suggests that just one week of insufficient sleep changes the body’s immune response and metabolism.
Source of this article:
2 Alarming Findings About How Poor Sleep Hurts Your Heart
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