This is bad news for insomniacs. According to a very large study recently presented to the American College of Cardiology, the annual world meeting of cardiologists which took place from March 4 to March 6, 2023 in New Orleans (USA), lack of sleep (nights less than 5 hours in length associated with difficulty falling or staying asleep) is very strongly associated with heart attack, especially in women. .
Insomniacs are 69 times more likely to have a heart attack
Information that is certainly not sensational, but the connection is proven here with extremely strong statistical power, since the authors used a very extensive literature review. Considering a meta-analysis involving a total of almost one million people (1,184,256, 43% of whom are women), without cardiovascular disease, with a mean age of 52 years, all of whom were tracked through self-declaration and consultation questionnaires. for a very long time, nine years.
These works, presented at a press conference within the congress and immediately published in the journal Clinical Radiology, found a 69 times higher risk in the group of insomniacs compared to those who had no trouble falling asleep.
“Insomnia (…) should be checked more often”
For their analysis, the researchers conducted a systematic review of the literature, more than 1,000 (namely 1,226) literature from around the planet, simultaneously American, but also British, Norwegian, German, Taiwanese and Chinese. Over nearly a decade of follow-up and regular visits to monitor for possible cardiovascular events, the authors determined that a heart attack finally occurred in 2406 of 153,881 patients with insomnia and 12,398 of 1,030,375 patients without sleep disturbances.
“Insomnia and sleep less than five hours per night should be considered an isolated risk factor for heart attack and should be screened more frequently,” the researchers conclude. So don’t be surprised if your cardiologist asks about your sleep, you can also talk to him about it spontaneously because there are solutions in the face of insomnia.