The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the incidence of mental disorders and sleep disturbances have also been aggravated by it. According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO) around 50% of the adult population and 24% of the child population do not enjoy quality sleep. Although it is recommended that those over 18 sleep at least seven hours a day, experts from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) point out in a report that 25.5% of Spaniards sleep fewer hours –1.7 million admit to sleeping less six hours a day – and only a third get eight hours of sleep or more.
Not resting well or enough has very negative consequences for health and can cause the appearance of diseases or worsen their evolution or symptoms. Now, new research to be presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting, held in conjunction with the World Congress of Cardiology, has shown that people who suffer from insomnia are 69% more likely to have a heart attack compared to those who do not. have this health problem.
The results of the study have been published in Clinical Cardiology and reveal that individuals who sleep five hours or less each night have the highest risk of suffering a heart attack, regardless of their age, and that this risk was higher in women. In addition, the risk of heart attack doubled for people with diabetes and insomnia.
Insomnia: a danger to heart health
The researchers reviewed 1,226 studies, from which they selected nine papers conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Taiwan, and China. In total, they analyzed data from 1,184,256 adults with an average age of 52, of whom 43% were women. 13% (153,881) of the participants suffered from insomnia, defined according to the ICD diagnostic codes or by any of these three symptoms: difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, or waking up early without need. None of them had obstructive sleep apnea and the majority (96%) had no history of myocardial infarction.
Trouble falling or staying asleep was also linked to a 13% increased chance of having a heart attack.
After accounting for other factors that could increase the odds of heart attack, such as age, gender, other medical conditions, and smoking, they found a statistically significant association between insomnia and myocardial infarction, which remained significant across all subgroups of patients. patients: the youngest and the oldest and in those with common comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes or hypercholesterolemia.
Specifically, those people who reported getting five or fewer hours of sleep a night were 1.38 and 1.56 times more likely to have a heart attack compared to those who slept between six and seven to eight hours a night, respectively. In addition, Yomna Dean, a fellow at the University of Alexandria in Egypt and one of the authors, states that “there was no difference in the risk of heart attack between those who slept five hours or less or nine or more hours per night,” which which supports findings from previous papers that have shown that too little or too much sleep can be detrimental to heart health. They even found that those who slept for six hours had a lower risk of heart attack compared to those who slept for nine hours.
When they assessed individual insomnia symptoms, they found that trouble falling asleep or staying asleep was also associated with a 13% increased chance of having a heart attack, while no association was found between unrefreshing sleep and heart attack, suggesting, according to Dean, that “those who only complain of not feeling refreshed upon awakening without sleep deprivation are not at increased risk of a cardiac event.”
The researchers believe that the results of this analysis, which is the one that has included the most people to date to study the relationship between insomnia and cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, indicate that “insomnia should be considered and included as a risk factor for the development of heart attack, so it is necessary to carry out better educational strategies to raise awareness of how dangerous it can be for heart health.
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