Chris Smyth, Health Editor, Barcelona
The Times
Gerry Gajadharsingh writes:
“Sleep disturbance is extremely common, some people find it difficult to get to sleep, others continually wake during the night, others don’t have enough sleep. There are many causes, such as too many stimulants in the diet, sugar, caffeine and alcohol, an overactive brain, “stress”, fear of dying, needing to go to the loo, disorded breathing, sleep apnoea and pain to name a few.
Some great things happen when we sleep properly, including the ability of the brain to release growth hormone, which we need to grow and repair the body, we also lose more weight when we sleep (it’s true!). Having a relaxed breathing pattern is so often helpful as it down regulates our often overactive sympathetic (stress) nervous system and helps our brains and bodies calm down. Poor quality sleep especially reduced REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is implicated in numerous health conditions. I think most people don’t take this seriously enough, so it’s good to see additional research to help inform people, again I strongly believe in choice in everything we do, the good things and the not so good things, life is a balance. A few days of disturbed sleep will not do you any harm but if it’s a regular pattern, maybe try and do something about it.”
People who toss and turn at night are twice as likely to have a heart attack, according to a study that suggests sleeping badly could be an early warning of serious illness.
Poor sleep has been linked to conditions ranging from cancer to dementia. It is thought lack of rest can damage the heart by increasing harmful inflammation as well as leading to insulin resistance.
However, cause and effect has been hard to disentangle. Some argue that trouble sleeping may be the result of emerging illness as much as the root of it. Those with existing heart disease often report disrupted sleep.
To help unravel the problem, Japanese researchers chose to investigate the role of disruptions at night.
“The kind of sleep disturbances that are most risky are not well documented,” said Nobuo Sasaki of Hiroshima University, who led the study. “Poor sleep includes too short or too long sleep, difficulty falling asleep, and difficulty maintaining sleep.”
He questioned 12,000 people about whether they woke often, got up regularly to use the lavatory, struggled to breathe or had bad dreams. Those who took longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep were 52 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack or angina, rising to a 73 per cent higher risk for those reporting poor quality sleep, Dr Sasaki told the European Society of Cardiology congress in Barcelona. Those who reported the most disturbances at night were 99 per cent more likely to suffer heart attacks or angina, he found.
“Poor sleep in patients with ischaemic heart disease may be characterised by shorter sleep and brief moments of waking,” he said. “Difficulty maintaining sleep reflects an increase in sleep fragmentation — brief moments of waking up — and causes over-activity of the sympathetic nervous system and adrenocortical axis [a hormonal system that regulates stress].”
Research published in 2014 concluded that the average Briton was getting two hours less sleep a night than people 60 years ago amid warnings that the distractions of modern life could be depriving the body of the vital time it needs to repair itself.