Could Getting More Sleep Discourage Hardening of Arteries?
People who scrimp on sleep are more likely to develop hardening of their arteries, a precursor to heart disease, research suggests.
Calcified arteries were found in nearly a third of people who slept fewer than five hours a night.
This dropped to around one in 10 for those who slept an extra hour, the Journal of the American Medical Association study of 495 adults found….
At the first scan, none of the volunteers had any calcification in their arteries but five years later 61 of them did.
This calcification appeared to be linked with lack of sleep.
The risk was lowest for those who regularly had more than seven hours sleep each night.
The researchers make clear that factors other than sleep may be involved– stress, blood pressure (which is affected by sleep), etc. In other words, if you are not getting enough sleep, you may have to examine your lifestyle in general. But that doesn’t mean that sleep issues might not serve as an important red flag.
