Relation between Sleep and Heart disease

Poor sleep can contribute to heart disease and heart disease can disturb your sleep, reported by Harvard Heart Letter.

Poor sleep has been linked with heart attack and stroke, heart failure, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and arteriosclerosis.

The reason behind all these conditions together may be due to inflammation that is the body’s response to irritation, injury, disease or infection.

The levels of C-reactive protein increases with poor sleep and other substances that reflect inflammation.

Sometimes you get heart disease due to poor sleep. You may wake up with trouble in breathing if you have heart failure. Some studies have shown that heart failure may lead to sleep apnea, a disorder which can awaken you repeatedly throughout the night for breathing.

Sleep researcher David White, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School studied for about ten years and found that people who slept for six or seven hours per night had the incidence of heart attacks and it increased relatively.

People who slept for only five hours has the risk of heart attack about forty percent higher than people who slept for eight hours.

Sleep deprivation affects your blood sugar levels. If you are sleep deprived, it requires more insulin to keep your blood sugar. Increased insulin levels and poor blood sugar regulation leads to development of heart disease.

Sleep apnea is a condition in which cessation of breathing occurs for more than ten seconds. During sleep, your airway collapses and you wake up to breath and goes back to sleep again. This may repeat hundreds of times per night and your sleep will be affected.

You may feel tired, fatigue and drowsy when you wake up in the morning. According to the study falls in oxygen levels and increase in carbon dioxide leads to the development of heart disease.

Spending too much time in bed is also bad for your health. If you sleep too much, it may also lead to heart disease.

Getting a good amount of sleep is important to maintain health and particularly heart disease. You should sleep for consistent amount of time, not less or not more. You have to maintain better sleep habits to prevent heart diseases.

Maintain good sleep habits to reduce the risk of heart disease:

• You should maintain regular sleep schedule such as going to bed at the same time and getting up early in the morning.
• Use bed only for sleep and sex. You should not watch television at bed time and should not do any activities which disturb your sleep.
• If you can’t sleep, get out of the bed or listen to soothing music to relax or read some book.
• You should not take alcohol before going to bed. Avoid smoking, nicotine, and caffeine as they are stimulants which disturb your sleep.
• You should not exercise before bed time. Exercise in the late afternoon or three to four hours before going to bed.
• You can do meditation or yoga and other relaxation exercises to relax and to get a good night sleep.
• Keep environment calm and peaceful as disturbances may disrupt your sleep.