Undersleeping Increases the Risk for Heart Disease
According to a new report in the Nov 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, getting too little sleep may be associated with a future risk for heart disease. In the present study, the magic number was 7 1/2 hours a night.
A combination of little sleep and overnight elevated blood pressure increases the risk even more.
We already know from previous studies that sleeping too little increases the risk for obesity. Undersleeping also raises stress hormones, and plays overall havoc with your general health.
In the new study, researchers at the Jichi Medical University in Japan monitored sleep in over 1200 individuals with high blood pressure, and followed them for a little over 4 years. The researchers took note of how long the participants slept each night, monitored their daytime and nighttime blood pressure and, of course, kept track of cardiovascular disease events like stroke, heart attack and sudden death.
During the follow-up period, 99 cardiovascular disease events occurred. And it occurred at a significantly higher rate among the folks who were sleeping less than 7.5 hours a night.
Now granted, the actual number of people affected was small- but it's still worth mentioning because of the many other problems we know about that relate to not getting enough shut-eye. I don't know that it has to be 7.5 hours exactly, but I do know that the 4-5 hours some of us are getting just ain't cutting it.
In my soon-to-be-released DVD program "The Seven Pillars of Youngevity" I discuss sleep at length, largely because it's one of the pillars of good health and long life.
Consider this: A lot of what we know about healthy diet comes from looking at what our primitive, caveman ancestors ate before the advent of processed food and food products. Those Paleolithic ancestors of ours ate food from what I call the "Jonny Bowden Four Food Groups": food you could hunt, fish, gather or pluck. Maybe Paleolithic man has something to teach us about sleep as well. After all, the cavemen hit the sack at sundown, and woke up at sunrise. Their sleep habits were nicely in tune with the universe's rhythm.
The best diets mimic the Paleolithic diet. Maybe we should try to emulate our Paleolithic ancestors in the area of sleep as well!
A combination of little sleep and overnight elevated blood pressure increases the risk even more.
We already know from previous studies that sleeping too little increases the risk for obesity. Undersleeping also raises stress hormones, and plays overall havoc with your general health.
In the new study, researchers at the Jichi Medical University in Japan monitored sleep in over 1200 individuals with high blood pressure, and followed them for a little over 4 years. The researchers took note of how long the participants slept each night, monitored their daytime and nighttime blood pressure and, of course, kept track of cardiovascular disease events like stroke, heart attack and sudden death.
During the follow-up period, 99 cardiovascular disease events occurred. And it occurred at a significantly higher rate among the folks who were sleeping less than 7.5 hours a night.
Now granted, the actual number of people affected was small- but it's still worth mentioning because of the many other problems we know about that relate to not getting enough shut-eye. I don't know that it has to be 7.5 hours exactly, but I do know that the 4-5 hours some of us are getting just ain't cutting it.
In my soon-to-be-released DVD program "The Seven Pillars of Youngevity" I discuss sleep at length, largely because it's one of the pillars of good health and long life.
Consider this: A lot of what we know about healthy diet comes from looking at what our primitive, caveman ancestors ate before the advent of processed food and food products. Those Paleolithic ancestors of ours ate food from what I call the "Jonny Bowden Four Food Groups": food you could hunt, fish, gather or pluck. Maybe Paleolithic man has something to teach us about sleep as well. After all, the cavemen hit the sack at sundown, and woke up at sunrise. Their sleep habits were nicely in tune with the universe's rhythm.
The best diets mimic the Paleolithic diet. Maybe we should try to emulate our Paleolithic ancestors in the area of sleep as well!
Labels: heart disease, sleep
Jonny Bowden, PhD, C.N.S. is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health and is the author of several best-selling books.
Fourteen out of 1000 is 1.4 percent, not .014 percent. Similarly, 8 in 1000 is .8 percent, not .008 percent. I quit reading after that, but probably any other percents in the article are also miscalculated.
Tony Barga
you are absolutely right, and the typo is being corrected as we speak. However the 44% still applies to reducing 14 out of 1000 to 8 out of 1000,which- while technically correct- is still highly misleading, so the point of the article stands although my decimal points were absolutely wrong. Thanks for pointing it out.
jb
So in the cholesterol study a reduction of 14 to 8 per 1000 you considered modest (and I agree). What were the actual numbers for the sleep study? Did it go from 60/1000 to 40/1000? All we get here is that 99 events occurred out of 1200 test subjects.
I'm not really debating that sleep is important, but this might be the same red herring that cholesterol is. The real problem might be stress. Some people probably need more sleep than others to keep stress lower.
The cave men did a lot of other things that we don't that would have good effects too. I suspect that wild game is even better for you when you have to go out and hunt it yourself and vegetables are better when you've spent a full day in the garden tilling soil...
I agree with Matt and I wonder if lack of sleep is the cause or is just a sign for the real problem, stress maybe?
I have often problems with sleep. I just can't switch of the brain and I spend half the night thinking. Needless to say that the next day isn't much fun..
I sleep 4-6 hours a night and hope it doesn't wreck my health but I don't feel stressed, so I wonder how it will affect me. Thou I have strange symptoms in my heart, irregular heartbeat etc.
I agree with you Jonny that sleep is essential to our health and well being. Maybe you can help me with a sleep issue I'm having. I'm currently trying to lose weight with a low carb diet. I seem to need 20 to 30 grams to lose. When I cut back this low I seem to have problems with night waking around 2pm and then not sleeping much more. Any ideas on how I can increase my sleep but still be able to lose weight? Thanks in advance for your help.
My good friends Mike and Mary Dan Eades suggest that this might have to do with ketones which can sometimes cause sleeplessness.They suggest drinking more water at night to remove ketones so levels are lower, and also "Weighting" more of your 20-30 grams of carbs at the night meal. And make sure you're not taking in TOO FEW calories during the day. Also I'd suggest trying melatonin- 1-3 mg at night before bed, possibly combined with 500 mg HTP and valerian tea. Hope that helps
warmly
jb
I have also heard that too much sleep can be harmful according to some studies. So, if I live in the north, then should I go to bed at 4:30 pm and wake up at 7:00 am, which would be a whopping 14.5 hours of sleep per night to correspond with nighttime? I'm seriously asking this question, not being a smartass.
It's a decent question and I know you're not being a smartass. I think the point of the article was to reference the natural rhythm of things and the fact that most of us don't get nearly enough sleep. Obviously there are areas at the extremes of the planet where darkness goes for 24 hours and so on... so I don't think we need to take the idea about "going with the natural rhythm" completely literally. Nonetheless, some healthy respect for the impact of light and dark on our bio rhythms is a good idea, and it's probably true that people who live in regions where that doesn't happen have specific challenges. But i don't think the answer is to necessarily sleep 14.5 hours either- perhaps even setting up an "artificial" environment where there is some alteration of light and dark and where the sleep time can be somewhere around 8 hours would be one solution
best
jb
At the moment our nights are about 22 hours long. It's dark when I go to work and it's dark when I get home and I don't see the sun in between, actually there are days when you can't see the sun at all. This affects my sleep a lot, since it makes me tired until it's time to go to bed. Then I wake up!
I've noticed how much my mood changes depending on what time of the year it is. Winter is depressing because lack of sunlight and in the summer I feel much stronger and healthier when the sun shines almost around the clock. The sun sets for about an hour. This winter I haven't been as depressed and I thing is since I use 125 mcg of vitamin D per day. I just feel so much better and I haven't had a single cold so far!
I tried HTP and it's effective but it also has side effects I don't like and that's why I stopped taking it. I think I will give it a shot again, I need the sleep because I'm constantly tired. The side effects are mild anyway and I can cope with that.
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