SEOUL: Expert said that people who get too much or too little sleep may have the beginnings of “hardening” of the arteries, which can be an early sign of heart disease.
“Many people, up to one third or one fourth of the general population, suffer from inadequate sleep – either insufficient duration of sleep or poor quality of sleep,” said co-lead author Dr. Chan-Won Kim of Kangbuk Samsung Hospital of Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea.
“In contrast, we studied if sleep of inadequate duration or quality would be linked to early markers of heart disease in asymptomatic healthy adults free of heart disease,” Kim said.
Short sleepers had 50 percent more calcium in their coronary arteries than those who slept for seven hours per night, according to the results in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. Long sleepers had 70 percent more calcium than those who slept seven hours.
“The calcium score obtained by computerized tomography scan is a very good measure of calcium buildup in the coronary arteries reflecting coronary atherosclerosis,” Kim said. “The higher the coronary calcium score, the greater the risk of having a heart attack in the future.”
Those who reported poor sleep quality also tended to have more coronary calcium and more arterial stiffness. The study does not prove that too little sleep is a cause of early arterial disease, rather than a sign of it or of other medical problems.
