Sleep and Your Heart
The amount of sleep a person gets affects his or her physical health, emotional well-being, mental abilities, productivity and performance. Recent studies associate lack of sleep with serious health problems such as an increased risk of depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
There was some interesting research presented at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Minneapolis in the middle of June.
One study that caught my eye was conducted by Siobhan Banks of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The research was based on preliminary analysis of 39 subjects, each of whom participated in a laboratory-controlled chronic sleep restriction protocol. The subjects underwent two nights of baseline sleep followed by five hours of sleep restriction. The results showed a statistically significant decrease in the heart rate variability after just five nights of sleep restriction.
We already know that a reduction in heart rate variability may occur in several cardiological and non-cardiological diseases, and it is usually a harbinger of a poor outcome.
This work may provide the mechanism for why short sleep duration is associated with a heightened risk of heart and other circulatory problems.
The amount of sleep a person gets affects his or her physical health, emotional well-being, mental abilities, productivity and performance. Recent studies associate lack of sleep with serious health problems such as an increased risk of depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
So if confirmed, the take home message is that sleep deprivation has a negative effect on a person’s cardiac activity and that may in turn increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality.
Dr. Richard G. Petty, MD is a world-renowned authority on the brain, and his revolutionary work on human energy systems has been acclaimed around the globe.
He is also an accredited specialist in internal and metabolic medicine, endocrinology, psychiatry, acupuncture and homeopathy. He has been an innovator and leader of the human potential movement for over thirty years and is also an active researcher, teacher, writer, professional speaker and broadcaster. He is the author of five books, including the groundbreaking and best selling CD series Healing, Meaning and Purpose. He has taught in over 45 countries and 48 states in the last ten years, but spends as much time as possible on his horse farm in Georgia.
