Addressing tenacious cases of insomnia may help residents prevent stroke, heart attack and other cerebral and cardiovascular diseases, according to the researchers behind a new study.
Participants were asked if they had trouble falling or staying asleep, waking up too early in the morning and trouble staying focused during the day due to poor sleep.
People who had all three insomnia symptoms were 18% more likely to develop stroke, heart attack and other cardiac disease than people who did not have any symptoms.
Individual symptoms were also tied to heightened risk. People who reported that they had trouble staying focused during the day due to poor sleep were 13% more likely to develop these diseases than people who did not have that symptom, for example.
“These results suggest that if we can target people who are having trouble sleeping with behavioral therapies, it’s possible that we could reduce the number of cases of stroke, heart attack and other diseases later down the line,” said study author Liming Li, M.D., of Peking University, Beijing, China.
The study involved 487,200 people with an average age of 51 years and no history of stroke or heart disease. The researchers adjusted for other cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking and physical activity levels.
Results were published in the November 6 online issue of Neurology.
