How sleep can affect your heart

This article describes the negative effects of getting a poor night's sleep, especially on your heart.

You might think that those nights when you don’t get a wink of sleep can’t do you any harm apart from the frustration you feel knowing that you have to work the next day and you might be asleep at the wheel.

However, sleep disorders have been associated with many conditions that you might develop later on in life. There are studies proving that insomnia or very few hours of sleep per night are linked to memory loss or to strokes as you become older.

Thus, it was proved that people who have the tendency to sleep less than seven hours every day are more likely to suffer a stroke.

A new research now shows that fewer hours of sleep every night might also be a cause for heart attacks later on in life.

The study conducted by researchers at World Health Organization revealed that sleeping disorders are as bad for your heart as smoking or leading a sedentary life.

“Sleep is not a trivial issue. Sleeping disorders were associated with greatly increased incidences of both heart attack and stroke. Poor sleep should be considered a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease along with smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet,” said Professor Valery Gafarov.

He also added that a normal person should sleep between 7 and 8 hours every night and, if they don’t manage to do that, they should seek specialized help from a sleep doctor.

The study, which began in 1994, involved 657 men whose ages varied from 25 to 64 years old, from Russia. They had never suffered any heart attack or stroke and they did not have diabetes, which is a disease that can lead to these conditions.

Their sleep quality was rated according to the Jenkins Sleep Scale and it was regarded as either very bad, bad or poor for those who had a sleeping disorder.

They were monitored for heart attacks and strokes over the next 14 years and it was revealed that 63 percent of those who suffered a heart attack also suffered from a sleeping disorder.

Therefore, it was shown that people who had sleeping problems were more than 2 times more likely to have a heart attack and 1.5 to 4 times more at risk of having a stroke that those who had a  normal sleep every night.

These findings are extremely worrying, given the fact that the mortality rate associated with heart attacks is extremely high. It was estimated that it represents half of the causes of death all over the world, making it the leading cause in many countries, including the U.S.

This is why preventive measures are extremely important. We need to sleep well, exercise regularly, avoid smoking and drinking alcohol, eat healthy food and maintain a normal body weight.

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Sleep apnea screening before surgery

Research claims that people going in for surgery should be checked for sleep apnea due to negative outcomes associated with untreated sleep apnea and serious heart issues.

Scheduled for surgery? New research suggests that you may want to get screened and treated for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) before going under the knife. According to a first-of-its-kind study in the October issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), patients with OSA who are diagnosed and treated for the condition prior to surgery are less likely to develop serious cardiovascular complications such as cardiac arrest or shock.

"OSA is a common disorder that affects millions and is associated with an increased risk of surgical complications, but the condition often goes unrecognized," said Thomas Mutter, M.D., lead author, department of anesthesia and perioperative medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. "As many as 25 percent of surgical patients may have OSA, but the vast majority of these patients aren't treated or don't know they have the disorder."

OSA causes the soft tissue in the rear of the throat to narrow and repeatedly close during sleep. The brain responds to each of these "apnea events" by waking the person in order to resume breathing. Since apnea events can happen hundreds of times per night, sleep becomes broken and ineffective and can lead to serious health problems if undetected. Those who are overweight or have high blood pressure are predisposed to developing OSA. It tends to occur in men but women can also develop OSA. Symptoms of apnea may include: heavy snoring, pauses in breathing during sleep and excessive sleepiness during the day.

The study compared postoperative outcomes in 4,211 patients with OSA, who were diagnosed by sleep study either before or after surgery, with a matched control group of patients who did not have the condition. Those who were diagnosed with OSA prior to surgery were prescribed treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy. CPAP keeps a patient's airway open by gently delivering pressurized air through a face mask.

The study found that although patients with untreated OSA were at an increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications, patients who were diagnosed and treated with CPAP therapy before surgery were less than half as likely to experience cardiovascular complications such as cardiac arrest or shock.

Additionally, researchers found that respiratory complications were twice as likely to occur in patients with OSA, compared to patients without the condition, regardless of when patients were diagnosed or if CPAP therapy was prescribed.

-MORE- For both cardiovascular and respiratory complications, increasing severity of OSA was associated with increased risk. Age, type of surgery and other diseases were also important risk factors.

The authors acknowledge limitations related to their retrospective study, as well as the potential resources needed to implement widespread screening. Nonetheless, this study adds to the knowledge base of how to care for this increasingly large segment of the population.

An estimated 18 million Americans are thought to have clinically significant OSA and, even more alarming, about 16 million of those people remain undiagnosed.

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Osteoporosis linked to sleep apnea

A study shows that poor bone health and osteoporosis are linked with sleep apnea.

People with sleep apnea, a common sleep disorder, may be at increased risk for the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, especially women and older people, a new study suggests.

Sleep apnea causes repeated, brief interruptions in breathing during sleep. Untreated sleep apnea can increase a person’s risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

“Ongoing sleep disruptions caused by obstructive sleep apnea can harm many of the body’s systems, including the skeletal system,” said study co-author Dr. Kai-Jen Tien, of Chi Mei Medical Center in Tainan, Taiwan.

“When sleep apnea periodically deprives the body of oxygen, it can weaken bones and raise the risk of osteoporosis,” Tien said. “The progressive condition can lead to bone fractures, increased medical costs, reduced quality of life and even death.”

For the study, published April 15 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers analyzed the medical records of nearly 1,400 people in Taiwan diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea between 2000 and 2008. They compared them with more than 20,600 people who did not have the sleep disorder.

Over six years of follow-up, people with sleep apnea were 2.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with osteoporosis. The risk for the bone-thinning disease was highest among women and older people with sleep apnea, according to the study.

“As more and more people are diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea worldwide, both patients and health care providers need to be aware of the heightened risk of developing other conditions,” Tien said in a journal news release. “We need to pay more attention to the relationship between sleep apnea and bone health so we can identify strategies to prevent osteoporosis.”

However, the study only noted an association between sleep apnea and osteoporosis. It does not prove that one causes the other.

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Risks of sleep apnea - stroke, heart attack, pneumonia, dementia.

This article discusses the risks associated with untreated sleep apnea. My only comment for this article  is that "Sleep hygiene" does NOT treat sleep apnea. - JR

Sleep Apnea: The Real Risks Involved

Subscribe FreeBy Mike Tuttle · March 27, 2014 

"18 million Americans suffer from it. It can lead to both physical and psychological problems. Perhaps you, as many do, have it and aren’t even aware of it.

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that is characterized by snoring and pauses in breathing at night, waking the person momentarily before they fall back asleep. This disruption of sleep can occur several times a night, 5 to 30 times or more in just one hour. A person, both adults and children alike, can suffer from this disorder for years, even decades, before realizing it.

Studies have shown that sleep apnea can lead to problems like irritability, daytime fatigue, depression, hypertension, heart attack, and stroke, but recent studies have shown that the risks are actually more serious than, well, a heart attack. And while obesity can lead to this disorder, the disorder itself can lead to obesity.

The authors of a review posted in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal wrote, “Metabolic health … is largely dependent on behavioral factors such as dietary habits and physical activity. In the past few years, sleep loss as a disorder characterizing the 24-hour lifestyle of modern societies has increasingly been shown to represent an additional behavioral factor adversely affecting metabolic health.”

...

“Our findings show that sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for incident pneumonia,” theysaid. “Our results also demonstrated an exposure-response relation in patients with more severe sleep apnea may have a higher risk of pneumonia than patients with sleep apnea of milder severity.”

Heart disease, dementia, diabetes … the negative effects continue to mount up. However, along with the worrisome research comes some hope.

Continuous positive airway pressure devices, or CPAP machines, are currently the most common treatment out there. They consist of a plastic facial mask, which the patient wears at night, connected by a flexible tube to a small bedside machine. Using air pressure, it keeps the patient’s airways open during sleep.

“We know that obstructive sleep apnea is a potential cause of high blood pressure, and we know that CPAP use is associated with reductions in blood pressure in people with hypertension,” sayssleep specialist Vishesh K. Kapur, MD. “And now there is reasonable evidence that this treatment can prevent high blood pressure in patients who don’t already have it.”

Modern CPAP machines also come with a built-in humidifier to help prevent dryness in the throat/nasal passages."

...

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Sleep issues can lead to heart conditions

This article discusses how snoring and other sleep issues can lead to heart conditions.

Adequate amount of quality sleep is very essential to maintain good health, replenish energy, and restore the mind. It plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy balance of hormones, strengthening the immune system, sustaining proper brain function, and supporting healthy growth and development. Sleep-related disorders are one of the most commonly encountered problems today and can immensely affect your physical and mental health, cognitive capacity, productivity, quality of life, and safety.

Research shows that sleep disorders and heart disease are closely linked and one condition can lead to the other. Your heart, being only a little larger than a fist, works hard to pump almost 2,000 gallons of blood each day. Sleep provides your heart a chance to slow down, and your breathing and blood pressure drop to levels lower than what occurs while you are awake. Lack of sleep can lead to several heart-related conditions which include:

High blood pressure

Chest pain

Hardening of arteries (atherosclerosis or cholesterol-clogged arteries)

Heart attack

Stroke

Coronary heart disease

Congestive heart failure

Congenital heart defects

Studies have shown that habitual loud snorers are at a considerably higher risk of developing heart disease and stroke as compared to people who never or rarely snore. As you sleep, the soft tissue at the back of your head and neck relaxes and gradually narrows the airways, causing you to snore. Certain factors such as obesity, smoking, consumption of alcohol, allergic reactions, and muscle relaxing antidepressants and sedatives are known to increase the risk of persistent snoring. If not treated, snoring usually gets worse over time, causing the muscles to get weaker and making it harder to keep the airways open.

Patients with sleep disorders are often sleepy during the day and have reduced ability to concentrate, remember, or think, and are at a higher risk of falling asleep while driving or working. Studies have shown that proper treatment of sleep apnea greatly reduces your risk of developing heart-related conditions and, in addition, improves pre-existing cardiac disorders. Medical treatment for sleep disorders may involve the following:

• Weight loss if you are overweight.
• Avoiding drugs/habits that increase the risk of sleep apnea such as sleeping pills, sedatives, alcohol, and tobacco smoking.
• Using Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) -- a slightly pressurized mask is fit over the nose or over the nose and mouth to hold the airway open and allow the patient to sleep normally.
• Surgery on the upper airway (if your doctor thinks you are a candidate for surgery) -- enlarging the air passage by removing the uvula and some of the surrounding tissue.
• Wearing a dental device or mouth guard that is designed to move the lower jaw slightly down and outwards helps keep the airway open during sleep.
• Getting a polysomnogram -- a sleep study that is usually done overnight in a sleep center. It electronically transmits and records your brain waves, heart rate, breathing patterns, oxygen levels in the blood, your eye and limb movements, and muscle tension as you sleep. A sleep specialist analyzes the quality of your sleep and determines whether or not you have a sleep order.

Sleep disorders are very common and are often ignored by patients. You should talk to your doctor about your risk of having a sleep disorder and get regular medical check-ups. A timely diagnosis and early medical treatment can help you recover from your sleep disorder and reduce the risk of other serious health issues. It is important to remember that good quality sleep is more of a necessity than a luxury for better cardiovascular and overall health.

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Women's Sleep and Heart Health

This article discusses how the amount and quality of sleep women get is extremely important to their heart health.

Getting enough sleep on a regular basis is one important way to protect the health of your heart. Poor and insufficient sleep is associated with a range of cardiovascular problems, including high blood pressure,heart attack, and heart failure. Both men and women are at increased risk for these conditions. But we continue to learn that when it comes to health problems associated with sleep, the particular risks to men and women are not always the same. A new study suggests that for women who already have heart disease, poor sleep may be particularly dangerous to their heart health.

Statistics from the American Heart Association reveal that heart disease is a bigger problem for women than most of us think:

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, and is more deadly than all forms of cancer combined.

• Heart disease causes 1 in 3 women’s deaths each year, killing approximately one woman every minute.
• An estimated 43 million women in the U.S. are affected by heart disease.
• Since 1984, more women than men have died each year from heart disease.
• Only 1 in 5 American women believe that heart disease is her greatest health threat.

Research indicates that poor-quality sleep—and waking too early in particular—is associated with increased inflammation among women with heart disease. There was no similar association found for men, suggesting that women with heart disease and sleep problems may be at particular risk for inflammation that can be damaging to the heart.

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco investigated the relationship between sleep quality and inflammation linked to coronary heart disease. They also sought information about how an association between sleep and inflammation might differ between men and women. Their investigation included 980 men and women at the outset, and 626 completed the 5-year study. All of those included were suffering from coronary heart disease. The average age of men in the study was 66. Women were slightly younger, with an average age of 64. Researchers measured sleep quality by asking participants to rate their sleep over the previous month. They also asked for reports of some of the most common sleep problems, including difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, waking frequently throughout the night, and waking too early in the morning. Researchers assessed inflammation levels using 3 biomarkers: Interkeukin-6, C-reactive protein, and Fibrinogen.

After 5 years, researchers repeated tests for inflammation and once again sought reports on sleep quality and sleep problems. When they analyzed data for both men and women together, researchers found no links between inflammation and sleep quality. However, when they analyzed data taking gender into account, researchers found a relationship between inflammation and sleep existed for women, but not for men:

• Women who reported poor sleep quality experienced greater increases in levels of inflammation over the 5-year period than men.
• Women who reported their sleep quality as “very poor” or “fairly poor.” experienced increases to their inflammation markers that were 2.5 times greater than men who reported the same levels of poor sleep.
• The association between inflammation and sleep remained intact for women even after taking into account other factors that might influence inflammation, including age, cardiac function, body mass index, medication use, and lifestyle factors.
• The link between inflammation and sleep for women with coronary heart disease was particularly strong among those women who had a tendency to wake too early in the morning.
• Women were more likely than men to report waking too early. They were slightly more likely than men to report waking frequently during the night and having difficulty falling asleep.
• Because the majority of women in the study were post-menopausal,researchers hypothesized that low estrogen levels might explain the link between poor sleep and inflammation. This question was not examined in the study itself.

This is not the first study to suggest that lack of sleep may be particularly dangerous for women’s heart health. Researchers in the United Kingdom also found inflammation linked to lack of sleep in women. This large-scale study included 4,600 adult men and women. As in the current research, changes to women’s inflammation levels were linked to sleep problems, whereas no such association was found in men. In an Italian studythat included both men and women, women with resistant hypertension—a form of high blood pressure that is not responsive to medication—were 5 times as likely to have sleep problems. There was no similar link between resistant hypertension and poor sleep in men.

This latest study provides some important information about one way that sleep may affect heart health. It’s also another reminder that when it comes to health in general and sleep in particular, gender matters.  In recent years there has been an increased focus on learning more about the differences in sleep between men and women, and how these differences may contribute to specific health risks. Evidence suggests that circadian rhythms in men and women are markedly different. Our circadian clocks are remarkably sensitive and precise, and even a small difference in circadian timing can have a significant impact on sleep. We need to continue to pay attention to gender differences in sleep, as a way to better understand, diagnose, and treat both sleep problems and the broad array of health concerns now associated with poor sleep.

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Women With Migraine With Aura May Have Higher Risk of Heart Attack and Blood Clots

This article discusses health concerns for women who have migraines with aura. Such health concerns include cardiovascular problems such as heart attach and stroke.

Women who have migraines with aura, which are often visual disturbances such as flashing lights, may be more likely to have problems with their heart and blood vessels, and those on newer contraceptives may be at higher risk for blood clots, according to two studies released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013.

The first study showed that migraine with aura is a strong contributor to the development of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke. The Women's Health Study involved 27,860 women, 1,435 of whom had migraine with aura. During the 15-year study, there were 1,030 cases of heart attack, stroke or death from a cardiovascular cause. The study examined the relative contribution of various vascular risk factors to these major cardiovascular events.

"After high blood pressure, migraine with aura was the second strongest single contributor to risk of heart attacks and strokes," said study author Tobias Kurth, MD, ScD, of INSERM, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Kurth is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. "It came ahead of diabetes, current smoking, obesity, and family history of early heart disease."

Kurth cautioned that while people with migraine with aura have an increased risk, it does not mean that everyone with migraine with aura will have a heart attack or stroke. He said people with migraine with aura can reduce their risk in the same ways others can, such as not smoking, keeping blood pressure low and weight down and exercising.

The second study looked at women with migraine who take hormonal contraceptives and the occurrence of blood clots. The study involved women with migraine with and without aura who were taking both newer contraceptives such as the contraceptive patch and ring and older contraceptives. Of the 145,304 women who used the contraceptives, 2,691 had migraine with aura and 3,437 had migraine without aura.

Women with migraine with aura were more likely to have experienced blood clot complications such as deep vein thrombosis with all types of contraceptives than women with migraine without aura. For example, 7.6 percent of women with migraine with aura who used a newer generation combined hormonal contraceptive had deep vein thrombosis compared to 6.3 percent of women with migraine without aura, but the timing of the two events is not clear. The occurrence of blood clot complications was also higher in women with migraine who took contraceptives than women taking the contraceptives who did not have migraine.

"Women who have migraine with aura should be sure to include this information in their medical history and talk to their doctors about the possible higher risks of newer contraceptives, given their condition," said study author Shivang Joshi, MD, MPH, RPh, of Brigham and Women's Falkner Hospital in Boston and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Study: ADHD Drugs Don't Raise Heart Risks for Kids

A new study shows that children taking ADHD medication don't have higher risks for heart issues.

Children who take drugs to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are not at increased risk for serious heart problems, according to a new review that confirms previous findings.

University of Florida researchers analyzed data from 1.2 million U.S. youths in Medicaid programs in 28 states, and found that the per-year risk of any child suffering a severe cardiac event was about one in 30,000. Severe cardiac events include sudden cardiac death, heart attack and stroke, and are typically caused by underlying heart disease.

Children taking ADHD drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin did not have a greater risk of severe cardiac events than other children, according to the study published recently in the British Medical Journal.

The results confirm previous studies that concluded that the use of such stimulants by children and young adults does not increase the short-term risk of serious heart problems.

"This is a question that has been lingering for about 10 years," study author Almut Winterstein, a pharmacoepidemiologist and a professor in pharmaceutical outcomes and policy in the UF College of Pharmacy, said in a university news release.

She noted that stimulants are the third most commonly prescribed medications for children, after antibiotics and antidepressants.

While this and previous studies concluded that use of ADHD drugs poses no short-term risk to heart health, the long-term effects still aren't known.

"It's an important issue to address, but we won't be able to answer the question until this generation of ADHD children, who began using stimulant drugs in the 1990s, reaches adulthood into their 50s, 60s and 70s," Winterstein said.

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Study: Insomnia Doubles Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

A study from Taiwan shows that those with insomnia are twice as likely to get a heart attack or a stroke.

Sleep difficulties, a problem for as many as 70 million Americans, can double one’s risk of heart attack or stroke, according to a study.

The study by researchers in Taiwan found that people with insomnia were twice as likely to have heart attacks or strokes than those without the sleep disorder during the trial’s four- year period. The research was presented yesterday at the American Heart Association meeting in Los Angeles.

The findings add to previous research showing not enough sleep can contribute to high blood pressure and waking too early may raise heart risks. Sleep should be part of the patient- doctor discussion during checkups, said Kristen Knutson, a sleep researcher who wasn’t part of the study.

“A lot of people and many physicians don’t ask about sleep,” said Knutson, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago, in a Nov. 2 telephone interview. “The first thing is to talk to their patients and also for the patients to talk to their doctors about their sleep and discussing sleep as one of the many important health behaviors like diet and exercise.”

No one is certain how lack of sleep contributes to heart attacks and strokes, she said. It may be that the body’s “fight or flight” system is more active with not enough sleep, which can increase heart rate and over time increase blood pressure and raise the risk for cardiovascular disease, she said.

Chronic insomnia affects about 1 in 5 adults, and is also a risk factor for depression, substance abuse, and impaired waking function, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Study Results

Researchers in the study looked at more than 43,000 people ages 45 or older who were part of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, including 10,871 who were diagnosed with insomnia.

They found that over four years, there were 424 heart attacks and 3,307 strokes. Those in the insomnia group were 2.3 times more likely to have a heart attack and 1.99 times more likely to have a stroke than those who didn’t suffer from the sleep disorder, the authors said.

Few studies have looked at the relationship between insomnia and heart events in Asian populations, Chien-Yi Hsu, the study’s lead researcher, said in a Nov. 3 e-mail. Based on the results, doctors should add sleep disturbances to the list of modifiable factors that may help prevent heart disease, including high blood pressure, smoking, obesity and diet, he said.

“Doctors should pay more attention to their patient’s insomnia symptoms, and consider using different methods to improve sleep, including medical, psychological or behavioral therapy, which might improve subject quality of life and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease,” said Hsu, a doctor in the Division of Cardiology at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.

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Sleep Apnea May Offer Some Protection During Heart Attack

Researchers have found those who have sleep apnea seem to suffer less damage from heart attacks than those without sleep apnea.

In a surprising finding, people with sleep apnea appear to suffer less heart damage during a nonfatal heart attack than those without the condition, researchers report.

In obstructive sleep apnea, a person's breathing is disrupted during sleep because their airway becomes narrowed or blocked, causing pauses or decreases in air flow.

Although the new findings do not contradict the widely accepted view that sleep apnea is a risk factor for heart disease that can lead to a heart attack, they do suggest that obstructive sleep apnea can provide some heart protection in the event of a heart attack, explained lead investigator Dr. Neomi Shah, associate director of the pulmonary sleep lab at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

One heart expert called the finding "intriguing."

"It is counter-intuitive to what we would expect," said Dr. Howard Weintraub, a clinical associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, in New York City. He theorized that sleep apnea might reduce the damage from heart attack "due to patients [with apnea] being accustomed to lower levels of oxygen in their blood during apneic periods."

In the study, the Montefiore team looked at more than 130 heart attack patients. Their median age was 58, and 35 percent had obstructive sleep apnea.

People with the condition were significantly older than those without it (62 years versus 52 years, on average), the study authors noted in a Montefiore news release.

Patients with obstructive sleep apnea had lower blood levels of Troponin-T, a marker for heart cell death that accurately predicts heart attack severity, and lower levels of an enzyme that indicates injury or stress in heart muscle, the investigators found.

The study was published Oct. 24 in the journal Sleep and Breathing.

Although the study found an association between having sleep apnea and experiencing less heart damage during a nonfatal attack, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Another cardiologist believes the study might have some weaknesses.

"Of the patients screened for the study, only about 1 percent ... were enrolled in the registry; this is a very low number for most studies," noted Dr. Stephen Green, associate chairman of the department of cardiology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

He also pointed out that the study "says that patients with sleep apnea have smaller heart attacks than those without sleep apnea. It does not say that people with sleep apnea have less heart attacks, and cannot say this."

Weintraub agreed.

"Sleep apnea may potentially result in more frequent, but less damaging, heart attacks," he said. Therefore, he added, "even in light of this information, I would strongly endorse appropriate treatment of sleep apnea."

Green also noted that "the diagnosis of [heart attack] was made by Troponin levels, which may be oversensitive, and especially in patients having breathing problems. It is not clear that heart doctors would consider all of the Troponin elevations to be heart attacks."

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Study: Noisy Neighborhoods Could Impact Sleep

A new study shows why living in a noisy city or in a busy neighborhood could impact sleep.

If street noise is keeping you up at night, you are certainly not alone, according to a new study.

A new study examines how traffic and street noise affects the annoyance levels and ability to sleep of residents of a major Georgia county.

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the noise and sleep habits of residents of Georgia's Fulton County (which includes much of Atlanta, as well as other cities including Sandy Springs, Alpharettea, Roswell and College Park).

They found that 9.5 percent of people experienced noise during the daytime that left them feeing highly annoyed. They also found that street noise was putting 2.3 percent of people at a high risk of sleep problems.

Residents of Atlanta, Sandy Springs and Alpharetta constituted most of the people who reported being highly annoyed by street noise, and residents from those cities, plus the city of Roswell, comprised most of the people reporting sleep disturbances, the researchers found.

"This research demonstrated that the overall road traffic noise of a highly urbanized area (i.e., Fulton County [greater Atlanta] GA) can be substantial, which might be indicative of poor environmental quality in this urban community," the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicien study.

Plus, the researchers found that more than half of people who experienced annoyance and sleep problems also happened to live within the "corridor" of the Interstate Highway 285, which runs in the county.

Because Atlanta wasn't even one of the top metro areas to cite traffic noise as an issue in a recent Census Bureau survey, the researchers said that this means residents of other metro areas that have even more traffic noise than Atlanta could be even more at risk of annoyance and sleep disturbances.

"The two psychosocial effects of road traffıc noise (i.e., annoyance and sleep disturbance) have been associated with negative health outcomes and may lead to the development of certain chronic diseases," the researchers wrote in the study.

A recent study also linked traffic noise with the risk of heart attack. That finding, published in the journal PLoS ONE earlier this year, showed tat with every additional 10 decibels of noise from traffic, it ups the risk of heart attack by 12 percent.

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Is Too Much or Too Little Sleep Bad for the Heart?: Study

When it comes to what's best for their hearts, people walk a fine line between getting too much and too little sleep, a new study suggests.

Adults who get fewer than six hours or more than eight hours of sleep a night are at greater risk for a variety of heart conditions, according to research led by Dr. Rohit Arora, chairman of cardiology at the Chicago Medical School.

Sleeping too little puts people at significantly higher risk of stroke, heart attack and congestive heart failure, the researchers found. On the other hand, people who sleep too much have a higher prevalence of chest pain (angina) and coronary artery disease, a narrowing of the blood vessels that supply the heart with blood and oxygen.

The findings are scheduled for presentation Sunday at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting in Chicago.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 3,000 patients over age 45 who participated in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, making theirs the first nationally representative sample to show the association between sleep duration and heart health.

The study showed that people who got too little sleep were twice as likely to have a stroke or heart attack and 1.6 times more likely to have congestive heart failure. People who slept more than eight hours a night were twice as likely to have angina and 1.1 times more likely to have coronary artery disease.

The findings remained significant even after the researchers accounted for heart risk factors such as age, blood cholesterol levels, smoking and obesity, as well as for sleep apnea and other sleep problems.

Previous studies have shown that insufficient sleep is linked to a hyperactive nervous system, glucose intolerance, diabetes, inflammation and a rise in stress hormones, blood pressure and resting heart rate, the researchers noted.

The reasons too much sleep can lead to heart problems are unclear, however, and further research will be needed.

For now, Arora said, health-care providers need to talk about sleep with their patients.

"Clinicians need to start asking patients about sleep, especially those who are already at greater risk of heart disease," he said. "It's really a simple thing to assess as part of a physical exam; it doesn't cost anything and it may help patients to adopt better sleep habits."

Although the new study uncovered an association between sleep issues and heart trouble, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until it is published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

SOURCE: American College of Cardiology, news release, March 25, 2012

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Treating sleep apnea may reduce risk of heart problems

Treating sleep apnea does more than ensure you get enough good quality sleep. It might also help protect you from getting a heart attack.

A recent study revealed that changes to the heart caused by untreated sleep apnea, which have a similar impact on the body as high blood pressure, were almost completely reversed after six months of apnea treatment.

Lead author Gregory Lip, M.D., a researcher at the University of Birmingham Center for Cardiovascular Sciences in Birmingham in England, and his colleagues compared three groups of patients, including one group of 40 people with moderate to severe sleep apnea.

They compared cardiovascular data from these patients to a group of 40 people with high blood pressure and a group of 40 healthy people.

Even though the sleep apnea patients had only a slightly higher than typical blood pressure, the abnormalities researchers observed in the apnea patients' hearts and its ability to pump were similar to the abnormalities seen in the hypertensive patients.

The hearts of the sleep apnea patients tended to be larger and have thickening in their walls. They also showed a lower pumping ability.

After these patients spent six months receiving treatment for their apnea in the form of continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, the heart irregularities returned to nearly the same measurements as those of the healthy patients.

The researchers used 3-D echocardiograms and Doppler imaging of the heart muscle tissue for their observations, which provide more accurate data than past research that has shown a link between obstructive sleep apnea and problematic changes in the heart's left ventricle.

"Our findings imply that OSA could be crucial in the development of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction that can lead to heart failure and increased mortality if left untreated," Lip said.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive assessment of left ventricular structural and functional parameters using advanced echocardiograms in otherwise healthy apnea patients," he added.

Dr. William Kohler, M.D., medical director of the Florida Sleep Institute in Spring Hill, Florida, said this study adds even more weight to the building research that links severe sleep apnea to cardiovascular disease.

"It's very important for patients who have hypertension and other signs of cardiovascular disease to be evaluated for underlying possible sleep problems, including and, in particular, obstructive sleep apnea," said Kohler, who was not associated with this study.

"This particular study gives additional important proof of the significant correlation between cardiovascular disease and sleep apnea," he said.

Lip suggested a randomized trial to confirm or clarify the findings because limitations of this non-randomized, non-blinded study included the potential for observer bias and the fact that the sleep apnea patents tended to have a higher body mass index, another risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

The study appeared online March 13 in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Read more here

Women suffer from sleep apnea, raised heart risks, too

Just as it does in men, obstructive sleep apnea can raise the risk for women of dying from heart attacks and having other cardiovascular problems, a new Spanish study indicates.

However, treating severe apnea at night with a system called CPAP -- continuous positive airway pressure -- can also help reduce the risk of heart attack deaths in women with apnea, just it can in men, the researchers report.

Sleep apnea -- characterized by repeated interruptions of breathing during sleep -- affects many more men than women, but up to 3 percent of middle-aged women have the disorder. One common symptom is snoring. Most patients have daytime sleepiness because of the sleep disorder. However, little research has focused on women until now.

"Women with untreated severe obstructive sleep apnea have a three-and-a-half-fold increase in the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared to women without (it)," said researcher Dr. Francisco Campos-Rodriguez, director of the sleep-disordered breathing unit at Valme University Hospital in Seville.

However, he found that treatment with CPAP in the women with severe apnea reduced that risk. The study is observational, so the researchers cannot say whether the apnea caused the increased rates of death or whether it was the CPAP that reduced that risk.

The study is published in the Jan. 17 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Read more: http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/2012-01-17/Women-suffer-from-sleep-apnea-raised-heart-risks-too/52610840/1

Insomnia Could Moderately Raise Your Heart Attack Risk, Study Suggests

Having trouble sleeping? If so, you could have a moderately higher risk of having a heart attack, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In a recent study, the risk of heart attack in people with insomnia ranged from 27 percent to 45 percent greater than for people who rarely experienced trouble sleeping.

Researchers related heart attack risks to three major insomnia symptoms. Compared to people who reported never or almost never having these problems, people who:

• had trouble falling asleep almost daily in the last month had a 45 percent higher heart attack risk;
• had problems staying asleep almost every night in the last month had a 30 percent higher heart attack risk; and
• didn't wake up feeling refreshed in the morning more than once a week had a 27 percent higher heart attack risk.

"Sleep problems are common and fairly easy to treat," said Lars Erik Laugsand, M.D., lead researcher and internist from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Public Health in Trondheim. "So it's important that people are aware of this connection between insomnia and heart attack and talk to their doctor if they're having symptoms."

Heart attack risk also increases with each additional insomnia symptom, researchers said.

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111024164706

'Less than 6 hours of sleep may cause heart attack'
Umesh Isalkar, TNN, Feb 25, 2011, 12.10am IST

PUNE: 'Early to bed and early to rise' is a good habit, but 'late to bed and early to rise' may not be a prudent thing to do, says a study published in the 'European Heart Journal'.

The University of Warwick in the UK studied 4.7 lakh people across eight countries to establish this equation. "If you sleep less than six hours a night and have a disturbed sleep, you stand a 48 per cent greater chance of developing or dying from heart disease and a 15 per cent greater chance of developing or dying of a stroke," the university team said. "Late to bed and early to rise is a ticking time bomb for health."

Read the rest of the article here.

Heart Disease Risks Common in Migraine Sufferers

ISLAMABAD: Men and women who suffer from migraines are also likely to have risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, a new study finds.

A report in the Feb. 22 issue of Neurology concludes that migraine sufferers were more likely to smoke, have parents who had a heart attack or stroke, and have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. However, they were less likely to drink, the researchers said.

"Migraine, particularly migraine with aura, is known to be associated with an increased risk of stroke," said lead author Ann I. Scher, from the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Md. "We were interested in looking at whether people with migraine were more likely to have classic risk factors for cardiovascular disease," she added.

Read the rest of the article here.