Short or shallow sleep increases the risk of atherosclerosis, according to experts from the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC).
Valentin Fuster, one of the world's leading cardiologists, CEO of CNIC, director of the Cardiovascular Institute of Mount Sinai New York Medical Center, told RIA Novosti why this study is of great importance for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
A total of 3974 people took part in the study, of which two-thirds were men. Before the experiment, none of them had problems with the heart and blood vessels.
“Sleep has never been studied methodologically in the same way as we have studied it. The patients did not tell themselves how much they slept, the measurements were carried out using electronic devices that determine when movement occurs in a dream, how deep the sleep is. The experiment involved four thousand people who consider themselves healthy. That is, we study the disease in its embryo, and not at an advanced stage. We found that, in addition to the amount of sleep (more than six hours), sleep quality is also an important factor,”says Professor Fuster.
For a week, participants used an altigraph to measure the duration and quality of sleep (how often a person tosses and turns, wakes up, how deep sleep is). As a result, the volunteers were divided into four groups - those who slept less than six hours, six to seven hours, seven to eight hours and more than eight - and measured the work of the cardiovascular system.
It found that those who slept less than six hours were 27 percent more likely to have atherosclerosis than those who slept seven to eight hours. In addition, people who had poor sleep quality had a 34 percent higher risk of developing the disease than those who had good sleep.
The number of volunteers who slept more than eight hours turned out to be relatively small to draw reliable conclusions, however, doctors believe that too long sleep can also be a negative factor for the development of atherosclerosis, especially in women.
Previous studies have shown that lack of sleep increases the risk of heart disease, including effects on glucose levels, blood pressure, inflammation and obesity. However, experts believe the new CNIC study is more accurate.
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“There are two things we do every day - eat and sleep. We've known for a long time about the link between good nutrition and heart health, but we don't have much information about the link between sleep and cardiovascular function … This is the first study to show that sleep is related not only to heart function, but also to the likelihood of developing atherosclerosis throughout the body,”says CNIC researcher Jose Ordovas.
Valentin Fuster believes that it is possible to influence the quality of sleep of each individual person. “There are people who drink a lot of coffee before going to bed, there are those who are in a state of anxiety. That is, there are many personal factors, and a person should consider whether he can change them,”he says. At the same time, the cardiologist is in no hurry to recommend people to change the quality and duration of sleep with the help of sleeping pills. "I would not advise taking pills, perhaps the effect of the pills will be worse than not sleeping," admits Fuster.
It is extremely important that poor sleep has been found to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, he said. “Each person knows how much he sleeps and how deep his sleep is, and this can help find a solution,” the specialist believes.
So far, he recalls, seven risk factors for cardiovascular diseases have been identified - two mechanical (high blood pressure and obesity), two chemical (high sugar and cholesterol content) and behavioral (smoking, insufficient exercise, poor nutrition). And now another has been added to them - a bad dream.
“We live in a consumer society, and certain factors of modern society are very difficult to change. We have been working on this for many years, and yet cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of death in the world,”the professor recalls. According to him, the main task of cardiologists today is to prevent diseases. “I participate in 14 projects, and the goal of each of them is to establish, not what is disease, but what is health, to prevent the problem. We use defibrillators, we perform expensive surgeries, but we must pay attention to an earlier stage to prevent illness. And to do that, you need to figure out what health is - as in the case of this dream project,”he says.
Elena Shesternina