How you sleep can impact your heart

A study in The Netherlands observed the relationship between sleep and heart disease among 20,432 men and women. Researchers found that short sleep contributes to cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease.

The research was conducted over a 12-year period. None of the Dutch participants had any heart disease when first examined. But during years of follow-ups, more than 2,600 cases of cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease developed. The study was able to link these heart diseases to particular sleep habits.

Short sleepers had a 15 percent higher chance of cardiovascular disease. Short sleepers with sub-par sleep quality had an even higher chance, 63 percent. The chance for developing coronary heart disease was 23 percent higher in short sleepers. And for short sleepers with a poor quality of sleep, the chance of developing coronary heart disease was 79 percent higher.

Short sleep was defined as six hours of sleep or less. Long sleep was considered sleep for nine hours or more. There were no links seen between long sleep and cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease.

The study was published in the November issue of the journal SLEEP. Read more about sleep and heart-related issues at the Sleep Education Blog.

Large-scale study links abnormal sleep length to heart risk condition

When it comes to sleep, getting too much of a good thing may be a sign there's something wrong. Researchers in the U.K. have tied long sleep to metabolic syndrome, a condition that increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

The latest study to tie excessive sleep to adverse health effects was presented as a poster this morning at SLEEP 2010.

The large-scale study involved more than 29,000 people in Guangzhou, China aged 50 or older.

The findings indicated people who reported regularly sleeping more than eight hours were 15 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome. The results were adjusted for potential confounding factors, like demography and lifestyle.

After making the same adjustments, links between short sleeper and metabolic syndrome disappeared.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute reports metabolic syndrome is a group of obesity-related risk factors that includes excess abdominal fat, high triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar. A person diagnosed with metabolic syndrome has at least three out of those five factors.