Sleep quality ratings and heart disease
This study was presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress, so all details are not available as would be found in a journal publication. Nonetheless, the info in this article is well worth the read if you want to appreciate some sleep knowledge of the utmost importance.
For years, when I’ve been interviewed in the media or in discussions with colleagues, I am often asked how many people are really good sleepers. My answer generally runs like this: “based on data reported yearly by Gallup or the National Sleep Foundation about sleep complaints in the general population, we know for sure two-thirds of adults suffer some type of sleep complaint. And, if you look at the related data for the most basic sleep complaints (can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep, poor quality sleep, and insufficient sleep), when you total up everyone who reports just one problem or more, the proportion rises from 67% to 90%. In other words, only 10% of the adult population has ZERO sleep complaints.
This study goes in the opposite direction so to speak by simply asking people to rate sleep quality on a zero to 5 scale (zero horrible sleep, 5 great sleep). What they found among several thousand participants in this prospective study is only 1 in 10 individuals recorded high values for their sleep…in other words only 10% were good sleepers or as they called it, “optimal sleepers.”
By following these individuals for several years, they noted 274 cases of heart disease and a clear correlation showing how these patients showed far worse sleep quality ratings.
Bottom line, which by the way has been known for decades and likely not reported to you by your primary care doctors and possibly your cardiologist, is that bad sleep is a very serious risk for serious heart problems.