By Kennedy Shelley
Who knew that sleeping your life away was literally true?
It turns out that too much sleep can be a killer.
Too little sleep is a danger too.
Getting the right amount of sleep is vital to maintaining good health.
That has always been a truism, but according to a new report in the Journal of American Cardiology they looked at the effects of sleep duration with heart attack risks.
They were able to show that ignoring the recommendation of 6-9 hours dramatically increased your heart attack risk.
Just how much could too little sleep increase your risk? Over 20%.
But sleeping more than nine hours is even worse, increasing your risk over 34%.
The scientists did realize that those who slept for more than nine hours had a high probability of having another condition that put them at a higher risk of heart disease, but they pulled people out of the study who had pre-existing conditions that put them at high risk apart from sleep.
The problem with these observational studies is they don’t prove that lack of sleep causes the heart attack.
It just shows that people with too much or too little suffer heart attacks more often than those who get 6-9 hours.
The only way to prove it definitively is to isolate people and force certain sleep patterns on them for years. This just isn’t going to happen.
But just like the studies in the 1960s that showed linked smoking with lung cancer, these types of studies can show a link between a behavior and an outcome.
Sleep has consistently been one of the most important factors in our health along with diet and exercise for a long time.
Freedom Health News has a host of stories that will help you get the sleep you need to maximize your health. This one may help you get started.
One area that the scientists pointed out in the study that those who can’t sleep 6-9 hours is that they may suffer from sleep apnea which will really increase your heart attack risk.
This condition is where the body can’t get the right amount of air at night. Most sufferers know this because of their snoring, which is usually called obstructive sleep apnea.
But there are other forms. The only way to get a definitive diagnosis is to spend a night in the sleep lab.
The best treatments are machines that maintain constant air pressure. Most of these machines automatically adjust air pressure so they don’t need the calibration they used to need. They also take recordings of your sleep patterns so you can know if you are getting the recommended amount of sleep.
To learn more about this device, see this article in Freedom Health News.
New smartwatch apps make it easier than ever to make sure you are getting enough sleep.
And devices such as the Fitbit will check your sleep at night as well.
One scientist conducting the study said:
“It’s kind of a hopeful message,” says first study author Iyas Daghlas, who is studying medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, “that regardless of what your inherited risk for heart attack is, sleeping a healthy amount may cut that risk just like eating a health[ful] diet, not smoking, and other lifestyle approaches can.”
Just like a good diet and exercise, good sleep is good medicine and a great prescription for good health.
