{"id":10743,"date":"2020-07-12T20:03:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=10743"},"modified":"2020-07-17T14:24:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T18:24:40","slug":"lack-of-sleep-and-heart-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/lack-of-sleep-and-heart-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of Sleep and Heart Disease: Are They Linked?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Are lack of sleep and heart disease linked? Can sleep deprivation cause a heart attack?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleep deprivation has serious effects on the body, and even leads to death. But chronic lack of sleep and heart disease are also linked. Lack of sleep and heart disease can stem from the body’s weakened state and inability to function at its highest potential<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

How Sleep Deprivation Harms the Body<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How are lack of sleep and heart disease connected? Sleep deprivation harms the body. In addition to the damage it causes to the brain, sleep deprivation disrupts the normal function of many physiological processes, likely contributing to chronic diseases<\/strong>. In this chapter we\u2019ll cover a bevy of health issues associated with sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a high level, sleep deprivation of even just 1-2 hours triggers the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response<\/strong>) and disrupts hormonal balances. This also implies that sleep is necessary for the normal maintenance of physiology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortform Caveat<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Many of the population studies cited in Why We Sleep are correlational – e.g. people who sleep less are more likely to have heart disease, after controlling for many other factors. But the causation is unclear – some other factors that predispose people to get heart disease (like a high baseline level of stress) could also reduce sleep. Remember this when researching lack of sleep and heart disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To address this, the experimental <\/em>studies cited attempt to link lack of sleep to a middle physiological state, which itself is causative for the disease. For instance, lack of sleep increases blood pressure, which the medical consensus believes is causative for heart disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideally, the \u201csmoking gun\u201d experiment would be to randomize people into normal-sleep and low-sleep groups for years, then observe the rate of disease. However, this is impractical (it\u2019s hard to run very long studies like this and impossible to double-blind) and likely unethical (if low sleep is already believed to cause severe disease).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diseases and Sleep Deprivation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lack of sleep and heart problems are a possible risk as you get older. In addition to other health problems, heart diseases can be serious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heart Disease<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Sleep deprivation has a number of effects related to cardiovascular disease:<\/p>\n\n\n\n