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Posted on Jul 02, 2012, 6 a.m.
Difficulty falling or remaining asleep puts people at increased likelihood of developing high blood pressure.
Insomnia is the inability to fall asleep or remain asleep and is the most common sleep complaint among Americans. Christopher Drake from the Henry Ford Hospital (Michigan, USA), and colleagues compared 5,314 subjects with insomnia to those with normal sleep habits using an internet-based questionnaire. The questionnaire looked for patterns of insomnia symptoms, presence and severity of hypertension and sleep and health habits. The normal sleepers were then compared to insomniacs for prevalence of hypertension. The researchers found that people with insomnia are at increased risk for developing hypertension. Further, the scientists observed that the longer it took the subjects to fall asleep and more times they woke during the night, the more severe their hypertension.
Mansoor E, Koshorek J, Roth T, Seto J, Drake C. “Hypertension Prevalence and Severely in Relation to Insomnia.” [Poster Board 153.] Presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (American Academy of Sleep Medicine & Sleep Research Society), June 12, 2012.
