General Health Sleep Deprivation If you’ve already nailed down your diet and exercise resolutions for 2009, think about adding sleep to your list of healthy must-do’s. New, meticulously designed research out of the University of Chicago, with a 5 year follow-up study, found that people who were sleep deprived had a 4.5 times higher risk of heart disease, whether they had cholesterol or blood pressure issues or not; whether they had diabetes or not; if they smoked or not. Sloughing off on sleep is a sure way of inviting silent heart disease and premature aging -no matter what other risk factors you may or may not have.
It all has to do with calcifications - silty deposits that attach to your arteries - and are strong markers for heart disease. Six per cent of the sleepers had calcifications in their coronary arteries after 5 years, compared to thirty percent of their more tired counter-parts.
So far, there are two possible explanations for sleep’s benefits: too little sleep raises levels of cortisol and other stress hormones. Longer sleeping may allow deeper and more sustained blood pressure dips.
Seven hours of sleep seems to be the divider, but researchers found that for every additional hour that people slept, their risk of coronary calcification went down by a third – a far better result than even the most effective high blood pressure meds provide.
The old news is that sleep deprivation creates hormonal changes that lead to increased appetite and insulin resistance, and that both obesity and insulin resistance are risk factors for heart disease. Combine that with connecting sleeplessness with calcification and artery silt, and it may be time to re-think the early bird getting the worm wisdom, and start considering what may be accompanying the famous worm.
Whey Protein contains the amino acid tryptophan which helps ease all of us into a deeper, more restful and longer sleep, naturally.
It all has to do with calcifications - silty deposits that attach to your arteries - and are strong markers for heart disease. Six per cent of the sleepers had calcifications in their coronary arteries after 5 years, compared to thirty percent of their more tired counter-parts.
So far, there are two possible explanations for sleep’s benefits: too little sleep raises levels of cortisol and other stress hormones. Longer sleeping may allow deeper and more sustained blood pressure dips.
Seven hours of sleep seems to be the divider, but researchers found that for every additional hour that people slept, their risk of coronary calcification went down by a third – a far better result than even the most effective high blood pressure meds provide.
The old news is that sleep deprivation creates hormonal changes that lead to increased appetite and insulin resistance, and that both obesity and insulin resistance are risk factors for heart disease. Combine that with connecting sleeplessness with calcification and artery silt, and it may be time to re-think the early bird getting the worm wisdom, and start considering what may be accompanying the famous worm.
Whey Protein contains the amino acid tryptophan which helps ease all of us into a deeper, more restful and longer sleep, naturally.
