According to a new study, those who sleep less than five hours each night may be 74% more likely to develop peripheral artery disease (PAD) than those who sleep seven to eight hours.
More than 200 million people worldwide suffer from peripheral artery disease (PAD), a condition in which the arteries in the legs become blocked, reducing blood flow and raising the risk of stroke and heart attack.
“Our study suggests that sleeping for seven to eight hours a night is a good habit for lowering the risk of PAD,” study author Shuai Yuan of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden said.
“Lifestyle changes that help people get more sleep, such as being physically active, may lower the risk of developing PAD. For patients with PAD, optimising pain management could also enable them to have a good night’s sleep,” Yuan said.
The study, which was published in the European Heart Journal-Open, included over 650,000 participants to explore the correlations between sleep length and daytime napping and the risk of PAD, as well as the causality of the associations.
In a study of 53,416 adults, sleeping less than five hours each night was linked to a roughly doubled incidence of PAD compared to sleeping seven to eight hours.
This finding was validated by additional investigations of 156,582 and 452,028 people, respectively. Short sleep was linked to an increased risk of PAD in the causal investigations. Also, PAD was linked to an increased risk of insomnia.
“The results indicate that brief night-time sleep can raise the chance of developing PAD, and that having PAD increases the risk of getting insufficient sleep,” Yuan said
In an observational study of 53,416 adults, sleeping eight hours or more per night was associated with a 24% increased risk of PAD compared to seven to eight hours. Analyses in two larger populations of 156,582 and 452,028 people validated this finding.
However, no causal associations between extended sleep and PAD were discovered.
Similar findings were reported for napping, with daytime nappers having a 32% higher risk of PAD than those who did not nap, although no causative relationships were discovered.
“More studies are needed on the relationships between lengthy night-time sleep, daytime napping and PAD,” said Yuan. “Although we found associations in the observational studies, we could not confirm causality.”
