Too much, too little sleep linked to heart woes

CHICAGO - Agence France-Presse

People who sleep less than six hours per night or more than eight are more likely to suffer heart problems than people who sleep between six and eight hours, said a US study on March 25. The findings confirm those in previous, smaller studies, but are based on what researchers described as a nationally representative sample of 3,000 people covering five separate heart ailments and their links to sleep duration.

The subjects for the study were people over age 45 who participated in a survey of health issues in US households known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Subjects were asked to describe their sleep patterns and were also asked if they were ever told they had congestive heart failure, heart attack, coronary artery disease, angina or stroke.

People who said they got too little sleep each night were two times more likely to have a stroke or heart attack and 1.6 more likely to have congestive heart failure than people who slept between six and eight hours nightly, the researchers said.

People who said they slept more than eight hours per night were two times more likely to have angina and 1.1 times more likely to have coronary artery disease.