Sleepless nights and high blood pressure linked

A lack of sleep may lead to high blood pressure that night and the following day a new study has found.

The link between cardiovascular disease and lack of sleep is well documented but the reason why, not so much.

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Researchers set out to learn more about the connection in a study of 300 men and women, ages 21 to 70, with no history of heart problems. Participants wore portable blood pressure cuffs for two consecutive days. The cuffs randomly took participants’ blood pressure during 45-minute intervals throughout each day and also overnight.

At night, participants wore actigraphy monitors — wristwatch-like devices that measure movement — to help determine their “sleep efficiency,” or the amount of time in bed spent sleeping soundly.

Overall, those who had lower sleep efficiency showed an increase in blood pressure during that restless night. They also had higher systolic blood pressure — the top number in a patient’s blood pressure reading — the next day.

Yep.

More research needs to be done but just to be safe, get your sleep on. And switch off that TV and those phones before you sleep. And yes, the light has to go as well. Also avoid doing work in bed. In fact anything stimulating needs to go.

We really need to do a whole post on this, don’t we. We’ll have one soon.

The study was led by the University of Arizona and will be published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

with information from Sciencedaily