Lack Of Sleep And High Blood Pressure

A good night’s sleep is very vital for good health as it equals better control of blood pressure and cardiovascular health. Sleep allows the heart to slow down , regulates stress hormones, helps the nervous system to remain healthy and blood pressure to drop considerably , hence inadequate sleep or insomnia or sleeplessness can be directly linked to as a root cause for high blood pressure or hypertension , a life threatening medical condition that is reaching alarming proportions. Lack of sleep over time could hurt the body’s ability to regulate stress hormones leading to high blood pressure and a major risk to this silent killer is that it often goes undetected affecting mostly people in the middle age category. Sleep efficiency or the total number of hours a person slept could be divided into 3- above 6 hours, 5-6 hours and below 5 hours. The implications of long-term habits of getting insufficient sleep have now extended to a variety of serious, life-threatening conditions. As a result, it may become an inescapable conclusion that the length and quality of sleep profoundly affects human longevity as well.

Based on an assessment between normal sleepers and poor sleepers , the latter apart from being at a risk to high blood pressure could also face depression and other psychiatric disorders . Poor sleepers could either have sleep apnea or sleep deprivation where sleep deprivation keep the nervous system in a state of hyper activity which in turn affect all the other systems of the body including the heart and blood vessels. This effect might be different in women and men.

The Heart pumps blood into the arteries and the pressure exerted on the blood vessels is known as blood pressure. High blood pressure requires the heart to work harder leading to the hardening of arteries and ultimately heart failure. People who slept for five hours or less per night were more likely to be diagnosed with blood pressure as it makes the heart to work at an elevated pressure. They were also likely to have a higher body mass index, were more prone to suffer from diabetes and depression and also faced daytime sleepiness. People suffering from sleep disorders or sleep deprivation wake up feeling tired and out of focus. There may also be a relation between sleep deprivation and diabetes as it may increase appetite and compromise insulin sensitivity. The duration of sleep leading to high blood pressure was found to be more in middle aged people and could be explained by the fact that older people may have difficulty falling and staying asleep.

New studies suggest that women who regularly get fewer hours of sleep have a higher risk of developing high blood pressure.

The link between stress hormones and high blood pressure was strongly related with people having difficulty getting to sleep on a chronic basis or waking up in the night revealing the fact that this combination of low sleeping hours and sleeping difficulties was the key in raising the risk of high blood pressure.