A study showed for the first time a clear link between a night of disrupted sleep and an increased risk of dying from diseases of the heart, blood vessels, or any cause.
Research from the University of Adelaide in Australia and Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands was published Tuesday in the European Heart Journal.
The study included 8001 men and women aged between 64 to 84 and examined the inpiduals for 6-11 years.
The researchers calculated how much a person's sleep was plagued by unconscious wakefulness events as a percentage of their overall sleep. It was discovered that arousal burden is associated with long-term cardiovascular problems and lower mortality in women and to a lesser extent in men.
Women were discovered to be affected harder by restless sleep than men. The women who experienced unconscious wakefulness most often and for longer periods of time had nearly double the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, compared to the risk in the general female population.
Overall, the risk of dying from any cause was 21% among women in the general population, which increased to 31.5% among women with an arousal burden of more than 6.5%.
The researchers found there was an increased risk for men, but it was not statistically significant in some instances. Men with 8.5% of their sleep disrupted by nocturnal arousal events were 30% more at risk of dying in the follow-up period.
Dr. Dominik Linz, associate professor in the cardiology department at Maastricht University noted that a common trigger for nocturnal arousals is obstructive sleep apnoea when breathing stops and the arousal system ensures the activation of our body to change our sleep position and to reopen the upper airway.
It remains unclear why women are hit harder by restless sleep than men.
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