Overall, patients who slept six hours had a lower risk of heart attack compared with those who slept nine hours. There was no difference in the risk of heart attack between those getting five or less or nine or more hours of sleep a night – “which supports findings from previous studies that have shown that getting too little or too much sleep can be harmful to heart health”. ![]() Going deeper, people who reported five or less hours of sleep a night “were 1.38 and 1.56 times more likely to experience a heart attack compared with those who slept six and seven to eight hours a night, respectively”. People with both diabetes and insomnia had a twofold likelihood of having a heart attack. On that basis, the researchers found that “people who clocked five or fewer hours of sleep a night had the greatest risk of experiencing a heart attack”. Sleep duration was used as an objective measure of insomnia (a somewhat loose way of going about it). These were difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep or waking early and not being able to get back to sleep. Insomnia was diagnosed by the presence of any or all of these three symptoms. This comes at a time when the American Heart Association has recommended doctors include the sleep behaviours when assessing their patients’ risk for heart disease.Īs we recently reported, the Australian Heart Foundation is developing a similar policy. ![]() The authors have called for insomnia to be listed as a modifiable risk factor for myocardial infarction.
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