William Atkins
Monday, 21 July 2008 02:03
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 2
A new U.S. study shows that postmenopausal women had increased risk of strokes if they sleep less than six hours a night or more than nine hours.
The research study was led by American epidemiologist
Jiu-Chiuan Chen, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Postmenopausal is the time-period after which the female reproductive system has stopped. In other words, it is considered the age at which all natural menstrual cycles of women have stopped.
Their results are published in the article “
Sleep Duration and Risk of Ischemic Stroke in Postmenopausal Women” within the July 18, 2008 issue of the journal
Stroke, a publication of the American Heart Association.
The study was conducted because only a small number of inconclusive studies have been conducted between cardiovascular disease and habitual sleep patterns.
The Chen study used 93,175 postmenopausal women, with ages that ranged from 50 to 79 years. The women participated in the
Women’s Health Initiative Observational study.
For validity of its measurements, the researchers adjusted for various external factors such as socio-demographic and lifestyle conditions, depression, snoring, sleepiness symptoms, and cardiovascular diseases.
The researchers found that 8.3% of the female subjects reported sleeping less than five hours per night and 4.6% of the women reported sleeping over nine hours per night. The women were studied for, on average, 7.5 years. During this period, there were 1,166 reported cases of ischemic strokes (that is, a stroke that occurs because of a blockage in an artery).
What specifically did the researchers find? Who were at the most risk: those women that slept the least or slept the most? Please read on.
