ISLAMABAD: Insomnia can lead to an increased high risk of stroke, warns new medical research.
The risk goes up with more symptoms, such as trouble falling, staying asleep and waking up too early, said a study published in the journal Neurology.
According to media reports, more than a third of the US suffers from insomnia, the study’s authors note. They wanted to investigate the ties between the disorder and the occurrence of stroke.
A statement accompanying the study said people with five to eight insomnia symptoms had a 51 percent higher chance of having a stroke than those with no insomnia, after controlling for other high-risk factors.
People with one to four symptoms had a 16 per cent higher risk than those with no symptoms.
A lead study author and epidemiologist Wendemi Sawadogo, a researcher at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond said, “There are several therapies that can support people improve the quality of their sleep, so determining which sleep issues lead to a raised risk of stroke may allow for earlier treatments or behavioural therapies for common people who are having main trouble sleeping and possibly decreasing their risk of stroke later in life.”
Earlier research showed similar ties between sleep disorders and stroke, CNN reported.
MD, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago said that bad sleep disrupts metabolism and blood pressure and causes inflammation, which is a stroke factor, Phyllis Zee.
Zee said, “Bad sleep can impair the natural blood pressure dipping that occurs during nighttime and contribute to hypertension a significant risk factor for stroke and cardiovascular disease.”
