T.O.I., Patna 27.12.2008
Sleep On It
Snooze your way to better health.
Insightful as usual, Shakespeare was on the button when he called sleep "Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast". Scientists now maintain that seven to nine hours of sleep for adult humans benefits alertness, memory and overall health, apart from reducing the risk of accidents. On the other hand, short sleep has been shown to be a risk factor for weight gain, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. The latest study, however, indicates that not getting an optimal amount of sleep can, in the course of just a few years, also lead to dangerous heart problems caused by hardening of the arteries.
The research, published in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’, tracked the sleep patterns of some 500 people aged between 35 and 47 over a period of five years and found that sleep duration appeared to play a significant role in the build up of calcium deposits inside coronary arteries. Specifically, 27 per cent of those who had slept and average of less than five hours a night developed arterial calcification, while among those who slept more than seven hours a night the number had dropped to barely 6 per cent. Meaning, just one extra hour of sleep a day can lower the risk of developing such deposits. Although researchers say that it’s not quite clear exactly how sleep affects heart disease risk, they add that getting enough sleep can help to keep our heart and circulation healthy.
The advice is particularly germane in industrialized societies and developing economies where fewer hours’ sleep and greater levels of sleep disturbance have become widespread. This change, which is largely the result of sleep curtailment in order to create more time for leisure and shift work, has meant that reports of fatigue, tiredness and excessive daytime sleepiness are more common than a few decades ago. And since sleep represents the daily process of physiological restitution and recovery, the lack of it could have far-reaching consequences.
For a country like India where cardiovascular diseases are already the leading cause of death, the message couldn’t be clearer: getting enough sleep is absolutely essential. And, of course, now when the party season is upon us there will be constant temptations for certain people to sleep even less than they normally do. They have been warned.
The research, published in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’, tracked the sleep patterns of some 500 people aged between 35 and 47 over a period of five years and found that sleep duration appeared to play a significant role in the build up of calcium deposits inside coronary arteries. Specifically, 27 per cent of those who had slept and average of less than five hours a night developed arterial calcification, while among those who slept more than seven hours a night the number had dropped to barely 6 per cent. Meaning, just one extra hour of sleep a day can lower the risk of developing such deposits. Although researchers say that it’s not quite clear exactly how sleep affects heart disease risk, they add that getting enough sleep can help to keep our heart and circulation healthy.
The advice is particularly germane in industrialized societies and developing economies where fewer hours’ sleep and greater levels of sleep disturbance have become widespread. This change, which is largely the result of sleep curtailment in order to create more time for leisure and shift work, has meant that reports of fatigue, tiredness and excessive daytime sleepiness are more common than a few decades ago. And since sleep represents the daily process of physiological restitution and recovery, the lack of it could have far-reaching consequences.
For a country like India where cardiovascular diseases are already the leading cause of death, the message couldn’t be clearer: getting enough sleep is absolutely essential. And, of course, now when the party season is upon us there will be constant temptations for certain people to sleep even less than they normally do. They have been warned.
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