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Why Heart Disease Risk Is Assessed By How One Sleeps?
 

Everybody needs to sleep. This is because sleep helps people to stay in good health and well-being throughout their life. Having sufficient quality sleep can help protect one’s mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. Possible damage from sleep deficiency can occur in an instant event like in a car crash, or it can harm a person over time. In fact, ongoing sleep deficiency can not only affect how well one thinks, reacts, works, learns and gets along with others but also increase the risk for getting some chronic health problems.

Previous studies have linked inadequate sleep to an elevated risk of heart attack and stroke. For instance, a study that was released online October 28, 2013 in journal ‘Sleep Medicine’ reported that people who tended to get less than 6 hours of sleep nightly were more likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and to be obese. But these studies could not rule out other conditions such as depression or obesity that could influence the association as well.

In contrast, a new study by South Korean researchers that was published online September 10, 2015 in American Heart Association’s journal ‘Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology’ examined whether inadequate sleep would be linked to early markers of heart disease in healthy men and women, before symptoms related to heart disease occur. According to the study, 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.

47,309 men and women who aged 42 on average were involved in the study. They were asked to complete a sleep questionnaire and they had tests to detect lesions of calcium and plaque in the artery leading to the heart, and arterial stiffness in the leg. From health screening tests, the researchers examined data of 29,203 participants for the amount of calcium in the arteries and of 18,106 participants on how stiff the arteries were.

Results of their analysis indicated that the average sleep duration was 6.4 hours per night, and about 84 percent of the participants said their sleep quality was good. Those who slept 5 hours or less were considered to be short sleepers and those who slept 9 or more hours to be long sleepers.

Long sleepers had 70 percent more calcium in their coronary arteries than those who slept for 7 hours per night while Short sleepers had 50 percent more calcium than those who slept 7 hours. Those who reported poor sleep quality also appeared to have more coronary calcium and more arterial stiffness. Short sleepers were more likely than others to be older, have depression, Type-2 diabetes or to be smokers.

Calcium score is a very good measure of calcium buildup in the coronary arteries reflecting coronary atherosclerosis. The higher the coronary calcium score, the greater the risk of having a heart attack in the future.

The study did link too short or too long sleep duration and poor sleep quality to early indicators of heart disease (coronary calcium and arterial stiffness), and provided evidence that sleep deprivation could increase heart attack risk. But it did not prove that too little sleep is a cause of early arterial disease, rather than a sign of it or of other medical problems.

Scientists have not yet to confirm whether inadequate sleep would be the cause or the consequence of bad health, but good sleep hygiene, including avoiding electronic media at bedtime, should certainly be part of a healthy lifestyle. Meanwhile, it will be helpful for doctors to evaluate sleep duration and sleep quality when assessing the cardiovascular risk and health status of their patients. On the other hand, people who are having trouble sleeping should see a sleep specialist, who might help improve their sleep.

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