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According to a new study conducted by the University of Arizona, a bad night's sleep could cause a rise in blood pressure that night and the next day.
The study, to appear in the journal Psychosomatic medicine, offers a possible explanation for the increased risk of heart attack, stroke and even death from cardiovascular disease.
The link between sleep deprivation and cardiovascular health problems is increasingly established in the scientific literature, but the reason for this relationship is less well understood.
Researchers have begun to learn more about this link in a study of 300 men and women between the ages of 21 and 70, with no history of heart problems. Participants wore portable blood pressure cuffs for two consecutive days. Wrists randomly took participants' blood pressure during 45-minute intervals throughout the day and during the night.
At night, participants wore actigraphic monitors – movement-type devices that measure movement – to determine their "sleep efficiency" or the length of time they spent in bed to sleep soundly.
Overall, those whose sleep efficiency was lower had an increase in blood pressure during that restless night. They also had higher systolic blood pressure – the highest figure in reading a patient's blood pressure – the next day.
More research is needed to understand why low-quality sleep raises blood pressure and what it could mean in the long-term for people with chronic sleep disorders. However, these latest discoveries can be an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the mechanism by which sleep affects overall cardiovascular health.
Blood pressure is one of the best predictors of cardiovascular health. There are many books that show that sleep has an impact on mortality and cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death among Canadians. We wanted to see if we could try to get an excerpt from this story: how could sleep affect diseases caused by high blood pressure? "
Lead author of the study, Caroline Doyle, postgraduate student at the Department of Psychology at AU
The study points out how a good night's sleep can be important. It's not just the time you spend in bed, but also the quality of sleep you get, said co-author of the study, John Ruiz, an badociate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. ; AU.
Improving sleep quality can start with making simple changes and being proactive, Ruiz said.
"Keep the phone in a different room," he suggested. "If your bedroom window is facing east, remove the blinds, and for anything that may wake you up, think about what you can do to mitigate these effects."
For people with chronic sleep disorders, Doyle advocates Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBTI, which involves making behavioral changes to improve sleep health. CBTI is slowly gaining ground in the medical field and is recommended by both the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine as the first-line treatment for insomnia.
Doyle and Ruiz hope their findings – showing the impact that even a night of restless sleep can have on the body – will help to better understand how essential sleep is for heart health.
"This study rests on the shoulders of a vast literature dealing with sleep and cardiovascular health," said Doyle. "This is another study that shows that something happens during sleep and the health of our heart.Sleep is important, so anything you can do to improve your sleep deserves to be prioritized."
Source:
University of Arizona
Journal reference:
Doyle, C. et al. (2019) Associations between objective sleep and ambulatory blood pressure in a community sample. Psychosomatic medicine. doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000711.
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