Sleep well to avoid heart attack

The fast-paced lifestyle today sees us trying to pack so many things in one day that even 24 hours seem inadequate. Often times the first thing to take a hit here is our sleep.

The body gets tired and needs to rest to reboot and function at its optimum. Inadequate sleep makes you feel lazy, dull and unenergetic. You find yourself not being able to focus clearly and losing concentration quickly.

Too little sleep or too much of sleep can both be harmful to your body. Adequate sleep, weight loss, quitting smoking and alcohol and physical exercise form the core of preventing and combating cardiovascular diseases.

Sleep deprivation affects all the organs, the heart being the most important of them all.  The bad effects of not sleeping well on the heart are equal to that of smoking. As per the studies conducted at a university in the Netherlands, people who slept well at night had a 22% less chance of developing heart diseases.

This finding supports the claim to put inadequate sleep as one of the risk factors for developing heart diseases. People with sleep disturbances are also at a risk of developing hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases.

Sleep apnea is very often found in people who suffer from hypertension. It is a condition where the airway collapses for a few seconds causing a pause in breathing. It makes you wake up and consciously resume breathing. The link between the two is not very well established, although there are reports where people who were treated for sleep apnea showed significant improvement in their blood pressure levels too.

A good peaceful sleep releases all the stresses of the day and calms your nerves. This helps immensely in bringing down your blood pressure levels. Try to get atleast 6 to 8 hrs of beauty sleep every night. It would be a big favour that you do on your heart.