Drowsiness at daytime linked to risk of heart attack

Women who are sleepy during the day might have underlying conditions that increase their risk of stroke and heart attack, according to a new study.

Based on data for more than 84,000 U.S. women, researchers linked daytime sleepiness to a more than doubled cardiovascular risk, the Newsmax Health reported.

“We thought that it was most likely that the daytime sleepiness was associated with insufficient sleep, shift work, snoring, and sleep adequacy,” which are themselves associated with metabolic disorders like diabetes that are risk factors for stroke and heart attack, lead author James E. Gangwisch told Reuters Health in an email.

Gangwisch led the study at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York.

He and his coauthors analyzed data from 84,003 women in the Nurses Health Study II from 2001 to 2009. In the first year, the women answered a questionnaire that asked about sleep duration, disturbances, snoring and shift work.

The researchers kept track of other factors like shift work, aspirin use, diabetes and high blood pressure every two years until 2009.

By that time, five hundred of the women had been diagnosed with heart disease or stroke.

Women who reported being sleepy during the day almost every day, which was five percent of the total group, were almost three times as likely to have been diagnosed with heart disease as those who were almost never sleepy during the day.

The women who were often drowsy were also more to suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity and depression.

“Get adequate good quality sleep by following commonly recommended sleep hygiene techniques such as maintaining a regular sleep schedule, allowing adequate time in bed to sleep, maintaining a comfortable sleep environment in terms of darkness, temperature, and humidity,” Gangwisch recommended. “Get adequate exercise but not shortly before bedtime.”

People who are often sleepy during the day should see their doctors, he said.

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