Less than seven hours of sleep a night can trigger potentially deadly high blood pressure - particularly for women, warns new research.
Getting seven to eight hours of sleep is the best for heart health, say scientists. While the association between sleep patterns and high blood pressure has been recorded previously, researchers behind the new study said that evidence about the nature of the relationship has been inconsistent.
The latest analysis pooled data from 16 studies conducted between January 2000 and May last year, evaluating the incidence of high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, among more than one million people from six countries over a five-year period. The findings showed that short sleep duration was "significantly associated" with a higher risk of developing hypertension after adjusting for demographic and cardiovascular risk factors such as age, sex, education, and smoking habits.
The association was found to be even stronger for those getting less than five hours of sleep. Study principal investigator Doctor Kaveh Hosseini said: "Based on the most updated data, the less you sleep - that is less than seven hours a day - the more likely you will develop high blood pressure in the future. We saw a trend between longer sleep durations and a greater occurrence of high blood pressure, but it was not statistically significant. Getting seven to eight hours of sleep, as is recommended by sleep experts, may be the best for your heart too."
The study found that sleeping less than seven hours was associated with a seven per cent increased risk of developing high blood pressure, which spiked to 11 per cent when reported sleep duration was less than five hours. Dr Hosseini said, by comparison, diabetes and smoking are known to heighten a person's risk of hypertension by at least 20 per cent. While the study did not look at why that might be the case, Dr Hosseini said that disrupted sleep could be to blame.
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For example, he said lifestyle habits or conditions such as overeating, alcohol use, nightshift work, certain medication use, anxiety, depression, sleep apnea or other sleep disorders may be factors. The researchers were surprised there were no age-based differences in the association between sleep duration and hypertension given that sleep patterns tend to shift with age.
The age of the participants ranged from 35.4 years to 60.9 years and more than half were female. When compared with men, women who reported less than seven hours of sleep had a seven per cent greater risk of developing high blood pressure. Dr Hosseini, Assistant Professor of cardiology at the Tehran Heart Centre in Iran, said: "Getting too little sleep appears to be riskier in females. The difference is statistically significant, though we are not sure it's clinically significant and should be further studied.
"What we do see is that lack of good sleep patterns may increase the risk of high blood pressure, which we know can set the stage for heart disease and stroke." He says it's important for people to talk with doctors about their sleep patterns, especially if they have disrupted sleep that might be due to obstructive sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea has been tied to higher rates of high blood pressure, stroke and coronary artery disease. Dr Hosseini added: "Further research is required to evaluate the association between sleep duration and high blood pressure using more accurate methods like polysomnography, a method for evaluating sleep quality more precisely.
"Moreover, the variations in reference sleep duration underline the need for standardised definition in sleep research to enhance the comparability and generalizability of findings across diverse studies." The findings are due to be presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session in Atlanta, Georgia, next month.
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