Long Sleep Duration is Associated with Increased Cardiovascular Risk

Research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association from the United Kingdom has found that long sleep duration is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease while short sleep duration was not.

Led by researchers from Keele University, along with colleagues at the University of Manchester, the University of Leeds and the University of East Anglia, the new analysis looked at 74 studies which investigated the link between sleep duration and sleep quality and the risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease. The studies included 3,340,684 participants who self-reported their sleep duration.

The researchers found that participants who reported sleeping for more than eight hours a night had an increased mortality and cardiovascular risk compared to seven to eight hours of sleep. A sleep duration of nine hours a night was linked with a 14 percent increased risk of dying compared to sleeping for seven hours. A sleep duration of ten hours a night was linked with a 30 percent increased risk of dying compared to sleeping for seven hours, a 56 percent increased risk of dying from a stroke and a 49 percent increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Compared to sleeping more than seven to eight hours per night, sleeping six hours per night was not associated with increased cardiovascular risk.

According to the researchers, “Our study has an important public health impact in that it shows that excessive sleep is a marker of elevated cardiovascular risk”.