Sleep deprivation or lack of sleep during midlife can increase a woman’s risk of cardiovascular disease. A study published by the American Heart Association’s Circulation Journal found that up to 50% of women suffer from sleep problems in midlife, and cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death.

Midlife is usually between the ages of 40 and 65, which is a normal age for heart health and sleep. In particular, menopausal women often experience a risk of heart attack. During menopause, women often experience immediate heart risks.

the study

Researchers in this study investigated whether changes in sleep patterns during midlife may be associated with heart disease later in life. However, the risks of long-term sleep problems and heart disease in women during midlife are unknown.

Participants in the SWAN (National Study of Women’s Health) prospective cohort had their sleep tracked up to 16 times over 22 years.

The annual trial, which began in 1996, enrolled up to 2,964 people between the ages of 42 and 52 from seven sites in the United States.

The women had no cardiovascular disease, were not taking hormones, and were either premenopausal or in the early stages of perimenopause.

Women in the SWAN study completed questionnaires about sadness, vasomotor symptoms, sleep duration, and insomnia symptoms over 16 visits. The researchers used group-based trajectory modeling to map sleep patterns (duration and insomnia).

The relationship between these sleep trajectories and CVD was examined using a Cox proportional hazards model that considered variables such as site, age, race, education, and CVD risk factors.

After more than 20 years of research, researchers found that there are four types of insomnia symptoms in women: low symptoms (39%), moderately reduced symptoms (19%), and low symptoms (39%). elevated (20%), chronic high symptoms (23%).

Women with consistently high levels of insomnia had a 1.71 times higher risk of cardiovascular disease than women with mild symptoms. Her sleep duration revealed three patterns: persistently short (5 hours, 15%), moderate (6 hours, 55%), and moderate to long (8 hours, 30%) .

Women with short sleep duration had a 1.51 times higher risk of CVD. People with both persistent insomnia and short sleep have a 1.75 times higher risk of CVD. Even after adjusting for other factors such as vasomotor symptoms, snoring, and depression, insomnia still showed an association with cardiovascular disease.

Among its many strengths, one major strength of this study lies in its comprehensive approach of tracking sleep patterns across 16 assessments over 20 years of midlife.

Unlike previous studies that looked at the association between sleep and heart risks at a single point in time, this study looked at the entire midlife period, and specifically looked at the relationship between chronic sleep deprivation and cardiovascular risk in older women. Provides important insight into associations with disease risk.

Limitations

This study also has some limitations, such as potentially limiting conclusions about longer sleep in the moderate-to-long sleep group (approximately 7.70 hours). Additionally, the researchers considered insomnia and sleep duration in this study, rather than other aspects of sleep such as timing or regularity.

Future research is encouraged to investigate both time and regularity.

This 20-year study of middle-aged women found that persistent sleep disturbances, especially when combined with persistent sleep deprivation, increased the risk of heart disease by 70% to 75%. Ta.

These results highlight the need to include sleep patterns when assessing women’s heart disease risk and highlight how long-term sleep deprivation can affect heart health. .