Eight Hours of Sleep Linked To 46% Increase In Stroke Risk

Individuals that get more than 8 hours of sleep a night have a significantly higher risk of stroke than those getting an average amount of sleep each night, according to a new study.

While many studies have focused on the negative effects of sleep deprivation, the effects of excessive sleep on health outcomes have been less well documented. In order to examine the association between sleep duration and stroke risk, researchers conducted a prospective study of 9692 stroke-free participants between 42 and 81 years old.
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The participants reported daily sleep duration from 1998-2000 and 2002-2004, and stroke incidence was recorded up to March 2009. Overall, 346 strokes occurred during follow-up.

Long sleep (sleeping for longer than 8 hours a night) was significantly associated with an increase in the risk of stroke (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.46 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08, 1.98]) in those participants with and without preexisting disease.

Stroke risk was significantly higher, they noted, both in those with consistently long sleep and in those with substantial increases in sleep duration over the course of the study.

Researchers noted that they are still unclear as to whether sleeping for more than 8 hours a night is a cause or simply an early warning sign for increased stroke risk.  

—Michael Potts

Reference:

1. Leng Y, Sleep duration and risk of fatal and nonfatal stroke [epub ahead of print]. Neurology. 2015 February 25. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001371 Neurology 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001371