Insomnia – Although sleep is an integral part of one’s day, it can sometimes be difficult for others to shut their eyes.
Those who have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or getting quality sleep are known to suffer from insomnia, and new research emerged that it could be dangerous for insomniacs.
Apart from affecting daily functions, a lack of sleep could potentially affect people’s hearts.
The news
Researchers found that people with insomnia have a higher chance of suffering heart attacks.
Their report noted that the most common sleep disorder is a struggle shared by 10% to 15% of people in the United States.
The study, published in the journal Clinical Cardiology, suggested that the potential link between insomnia and heart attack has a higher chance of affecting women.
Dr. Martha Gulati, the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute’s director of prevention, said that most of her patients are women, noting that insomnia is a risk factor for those who have a form of ischemic heart disease.
Although not involved with the study, Gulati offered her perspective: “Insomnia is actually quite common.”
“We see it probably in 1 in 10 patients in the United States. It is my impression that almost everyone experiences insomnia at some point in their life.”
“The estimate is that 1 in 2 adults experience it at some point in their life, maybe in the short term because of stressful moments.”
Analysis
The study’s analysis uses more than 11 years’ worth of data from 1,184,256 adults in the following countries:
China
Germany
Norway
Taiwan
The United States
The United Kingdom
For the analysis, researchers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United States defined insomnia as a sleep disorder that had three main symptoms:
Difficulty falling asleep
Waking up early but restlessness that makes it hard to sleep again
Among the participants, 1,030,375 were found not to have insomnia, while 153,881 did.
Researchers found that people with insomnia were 1.69 times more likely to have a heart attack.
However, the heart attack numbers were still low, and they occurred in around 1.6% of people with insomnia and 1.2% of those without insomnia.
Hours of sleep
The study found a connection between higher chances of heart attacks and how long participants slept at night.
People who slept five hours or less were linked to heart attack risk and were 1.56 times more likely to suffer heart attacks than people who slept seven or eight hours.
However, longer sleep doesn’t guarantee protection.
According to the study, people who slept six hours a night had a lesser chance of a heart attack than those who slept nine hours or more.
“A lot of studies have pointed somewhere between seven and eight hours of sleep being the magic number for us,” said Gulati.
“There is obviously variability for everyone, but too much sleep is rarely the issue.”
The study revealed that the heart attack risk among people with insomnia persisted regardless of age or gender.
Source: https://nyweekly.com/health/insomnia-connected-to-risk-heart-attack/
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