Chronic sleep loss, sleep debt dangerous

Humans spend about one-third of their lives asleep, so it's no wonder that we often try to cheat the system by rising early and going to bed late.

Many people think they can make up a sleep debt with one or two good nights of rest on the weekend, but new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital suggests this is impossible.

Scientists studied healthy volunteers in a sleep lab for three weeks. The participants kept a schedule that was similar to an on-call doctor - 33 hours awake, followed by 10 hours of sleep.

On average, this translates to less than six hours of sleep per night. They found that volunteers' reaction times improved after they had a chance to sleep - but this improvement steadily wore off over the course of the day.

In the late hours, people's chronic sleep loss caught up with them and caused them to make more errors.

Researchers say the resulting sleep debt creates a dangerous situation for late-night drivers or those who work overnights in a hospital.

Source: www.wkowtv.com

Lack of sleep, too much sleep, both deadly

www.upi.com

A lack of sleep can double the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, but too much sleep can also double the risk of death, British researchers found.

Researchers from the University of Warwick, and University College London have found those who had cut their sleeping from 7 hours to 5 hours a night or less faced a 1.7 fold increased risk in mortality from all causes, and twice the increased risk of death from a cardiovascular problem in particular.

They also found that those, who increased their sleep from 8 hours or more a night, were more than twice as likely to die predominantly from non-cardiovascular diseases.

Francesco Cappuccio of the University of Warwick’s Warwick Medical School studied how sleep patterns affected the mortality of 10,308 civil servants in the Whitehall II study at two points in their life during 1985 to 1988 and those still alive in 1992 to 1993.

The researchers took into account other factors such as age, sex, marital status, employment grade, smoking status, physical activity, alcohol consumption, self-rated health, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol and other physical illness.

The findings were presented to the British Sleep Society.

Sleep yourself healthy: seven hours a night helps reduce heart problems

Sleep Deprivation Can Lead To Hypertension Risk in Women

www.efluxmedia.com

by Anna Boyd

A new study by British researchers shows that women who deprive themselves of sleep may be more likely to die of heart disease.

Warwick Medical School researchers from the University of Warwick published their study this week in the journal Hypertension. The authors write that women who slept five hours or less were twice as likely to suffer from high blood pressure (hypertension) than women who slept seven hours or more a night.

They found no difference between men sleeping less than five hours or more than seven hours each night.

“Sustained sleep curtailment, ensuing excessive daytime sleepiness and the higher cardiovascular risk are causes for concern,” lead author Prof. Francesco Cappuccio from the University of Warwick's Warwick Medical School, said in a statement.

“Emerging evidence also suggests a potential role for sleep deprivation as a predictor or risk factor for conditions like obesity and diabetes,” he added.

Cappuccio and his colleagues analyzed data pertaining to more than 6,500 participants, more than 4,000 men and more than 1,500 women. All were volunteers from 20 civil service departments based in London.

The researchers established hypertension as blood pressure equal to or higher than 140/90 mm Hg within their sample, or if the participant regularly required blood pressure medications.

Cappuccio said lack of sleep had been linked to a higher risk of developing high blood pressure but also to increased death from cardiovascular cause. “It is a stark finding but the results are highly suggestive of a causal link,” the Daily Mail quotes him as saying.

He will present his research later this month at the British Sleep Society's annual meeting in Cambridge, according to the Daily Mail.

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Getting Up Early is Bad for the Heart

www.shortnews.com

A study has been undertaken by several Japanese universities and hospitals has stated that waking up early in the morning may be bad for your heart. The study researched some 3,017 healthy adults. Their ages varied between 23 and 90 years.

The study found that "Rising early to go to work or exercise might not be beneficial to health, but rather a risk for vascular diseases." The study was awful sure to state that those who rise early are also generally older.

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