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The following article was published in Your Health Magazine. Our mission is to empower people to live healthier.
Charu Sabharwal, MD, DABSM
Sleep The Forgotten Heart Healthy Goal
Comprehensive Sleep Care Center
. https://comprehensivesleepcare.com/

Sleep The Forgotten Heart Healthy Goal

Are you a part of the 35-40% of American adults ringing in the New Year with a resolution of achieving better health through a commitment to change your behavior or habits?

Health benefits of maintaining a smart diet, exercising regularly, smoking cessation, and stress management are well known to everyone. Surprisingly, few people take into consideration, or are unaware of, the adverse effects on overall health caused by a lack of sleep.

Recent studies are making the sleep-heart connection impossible to ignore. Research has been consistent in that not sleeping well or too little sleep can promote calcium buildup in the heart arteries, leading to the plaques that can then break apart and cause heart attacks and strokes.

A good night’s sleep is as important as maintaining a healthy diet and exercising. Sleep is the time when our bodies go through a restorative process with a nighttime drop in blood pressure, heart rate, and some important hormones.

When sleep time is shortened, the nervous system stays more active, keeping blood pressure and heart rates elevated. In experimental conditions of sleep restriction or deprivation, sleep loss stimulates inflammation in the body, which is also linked to heart disease.

Exactly how lack of sleep feeds plaque into the heart arteries may not be perfectly clear, but is suspected to involve the rise in cortisol (stress hormone) levels associated with too little sleep. This rise fuels inflammation in the body, which can destabilize plaques.

In general, blood pressure dips during sleep. Over a twenty-four hour period, people sleeping less will have shorter periods of lowered blood pressure, thus increasing their tendency to dislodge any unstable plaques.

Measuring the Risk

A University of Chicago team was the first to document exactly how much of a risk shortened sleep can be one hour less on average each night can increase coronary calcium by 16%. Conversely, one additional hour of sleep per night was associated with a 33% decrease in the odds of plaque or calcification an outcome equal to reducing systolic (pressure in arteries when the heart beats) blood pressure by 17-point elevations. Evidence shows that it is important to include sleep, along with the traditional risk factors, in any discussion of heart disease.

Not sleeping well or enough is not okay. Chronic sleep deprivation significantly affects performance, safety, and health it is very often due to unrecognized sleep disorders. If you aren’t getting adequate sleep, discuss sleep habits with your doctor. Good luck with your 2012 New Year’s resolutions.

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