Lousy, short sleeps probably raise blood pressure
Three pages on PainSci cite Knutson 2009: 1. Anxiety & Chronic Pain 2. The Insomnia Guide for Chronic Pain Patients 3. Insomnia Until it Hurts
PainSci commentary on Knutson 2009: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
Bad sleeps — quantity and quality, probably especially if caused by stress — are associated with elevated blood pressure, according to a side project of the big CARDIA study of coronary artery disease. They used wrist gadgets to monitor sleep and blood pressure in more than 500 adults in their 30s and 40s. The authors say the sleep-BP link is supported by previous research and “laboratory evidence of increased sympathetic nervous activity as a likely mechanism underlying the increase in BP after sleep loss.”
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies have reported an association between self-reported short sleep duration and high blood pressure (BP). Our objective was to examine both cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between objectively measured sleep and BP.
METHODS: This study is ancillary to the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) cohort study. Blood pressure was measured in 2000 and 2001 and in 2005 and 2006. Sleep was measured twice using wrist actigraphy for 3 consecutive days between 2003 and 2005. Sleep duration and sleep maintenance (a component of sleep quality) were calculated. Analyses included 578 African Americans and whites aged 33 to 45 years at baseline. Outcome measures were systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) levels, 5-year change in BP, and incident hypertension.
RESULTS: After we excluded the patients who were taking antihypertensive medications and adjusted for age, race, and sex, shorter sleep duration and lower sleep maintenance predicted significantly higher SBP and DBP levels cross-sectionally as well as more adverse changes in SBP and DBP levels over 5 years (all P < .05). Short sleep duration also predicted significantly increased odds of incident hypertension (odds ratio, 1.37; 95% confidence interval, 1.05-1.78). Adjustment for 16 additional covariates, including snoring and daytime sleepiness, slightly attenuated the associations between sleep and BP. Sleep duration appeared to mediate the difference between African Americans and whites in DBP change over time (P = .02).
CONCLUSION: Reduced sleep duration and consolidation predicted higher BP levels and adverse changes in BP, suggesting the need for studies to investigate whether interventions to optimize sleep may reduce BP.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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- Topical glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) and eccentric exercises in the treatment of mid-portion achilles tendinopathy (the NEAT trial): a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Kirwan 2024 Br J Sports Med.
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- Cannabidiol (CBD) products for pain: ineffective, expensive, and with potential harms. Moore 2023 J Pain.