(Huffington Post) — Feeling like a zombie the next day isn’t the only consequence of insomnia — a new study shows it might also up the odds of developing high blood pressure.
Researchers from the Henry Ford Center for Sleep Disorders found that there was a correlation between having trouble falling asleep and/or waking during the night, and severity of high blood pressure.
“The cause of hypertension in insomniacs is due to the number of times the individual wakes during the night as well as their sleep latency –- the length of time it takes to accomplish the transition from full wakefulness to sleep,” study researcher Christopher Drake, associate scientist at the Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders and Research Center, said in a statement.
The study included 5,314 people with insomnia, whose sleep habits were compared with people who don’t have insomnia via an online questionnaire. The research is set to be presented at the Sleep 2012 conference next week. Because it is not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, the findings should be regarded as preliminary.
As many as 10 percent of all Americans have insomnia, according to a report published earlier this year in the journal The Lancet, and almost 25 percent of all Americans are unhappy with their sleep.
(6 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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I have a terrible time falling and staying asleep. I am slim and fit, exercise routinely(cardio, pilates and weights), never smoked, drink moderately, but have battled hypertension for more than 30 years since my 30’s, after developing preeclampsia and delivering 6 weeks prematurely (thankfully, my baby was healthy). Could my insomnia be a cause or an effect of hypertension?
I can well believe that bad sleep causes hypertention.
I wake up during the night and I also have some really horrid dreams where I’m lost, or cannot find my van (full of tools),my dreams are always tension causing, consequently I wake uo with quite a high BP reading which settles down during the day.
after being diagnosed with bp. told doctor did not want tablets that made me cough – which she proceeded to do. i also swelled up like michelin man – my legs were almost double their size with water retention.
doctor gave me water tablets, but also said that as i would loose the benefit of bp tablets through passing so much water, would need more bp tablets to make up the difference.
waking up several times a night was counter-active to above advice, didn’t get more than two hours sleep at a time. have now stopped taking any medication – might now be a wise move, but felt i was going round in circles