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In older women, sleep debt may be harmful to CV health
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ANAHEIM, Calif. — Sleep debt was associated with lower odds of ideal CV health in older women, according to a presentation at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.
“We were interested in the relationship between adverse experiences and health, particularly cardiovascular health,” Michelle A. Albert, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease (NURTURE Center) at the University of California, San Francisco, told Cardiology Today. “We wanted to evaluate if sleep debt, which is the difference in the absolute amount of sleep on the weekdays vs. the weekend — as many persons sleep later on the weekend to catch up on sleep — had any impact on cardiovascular health.”
Albert and colleagues analyzed 21,562 women (mean age, 72 years) without CVD or cancer from the Women’s Health Study of female health professionals. They assessed the relationship between sleep debt and attainment of the AHA’s Life’s Simple 7 targets for BMI, smoking, physical activity, diet, BP, total cholesterol and glucose. Sleep debt was defined as a self-reported difference of 2 hours or more in total weekday and weekend sleep hours.
Compared with women without sleep debt, women with sleep debt were more likely to be obese and have hypertension (P for all < .05), according to the researchers.
After adjustment for age and race/ethnicity, sleep debt was associated with decreased ideal CV health (beta coefficient = –0.1274; 95% CI, –0.1178 to –0.0771), Albert and colleagues found.
The work showed that the association remained significant after further adjustments for education, income, depression/anxiety, cumulative/chronic psychological stress and reported snoring, Tomas Cabeza de Baca, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the NURTURE Center, said. The association remained significant after further adjustments for education, income, depression/anxiety, cumulative stress and reported snoring.
The largest attenuation in the magnitude of the relationship between sleep debt and ideal CV health resulted from a composite measure of acute and chronic stressors or from cumulative stress, the researchers reported.
“These results don’t prove a direct relationship but suggest that needing to catch up on sleep on the weekend due to poor sleep hygiene or other reasons might be associated with worse CV health factors,” Albert told Cardiology Today. “Poor sleep can be due to many illnesses including psychiatric illnesses, anxiety or environmental causes. Doctors should make sure to ask their patients about sleep disturbances, which can give insight into their well-being and health, including cardiovascular health.” – by Erik Swain
Reference:
De Baca TC, et al. Presentation 798. Presented at: American Heart Association Scientific Sessions; Nov. 11-15, 2017; Anaheim, Calif.
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.