I recently came across this Mayo Clinic study on High Blood Pressure, and I thought their findings are worth sharing.

According to the report, researchers set out to discover how “reduced sleep could affect a person’s blood pressure.” For the experiment, they monitored the sleep patterns of eight healthy, normal-weight participants for 9 days.

The eight participants with ages ranging from 19 to 36 were split into two groups: one set who slept only four hours each night for nine days, and the other who slept for nine hours each night for those same nine days.

Throughout the 9-day period, the researchers monitored each subjects’ blood pressure 24 times throughout a daily cycle. The results revealed that when their subjects experienced prolonged periods of shorter sleep, they also registered substantially higher blood pressure numbers at night.

The sleep-restricted participants registered an average of 125/74 mm Hg during the nighttime and 145/86 mm during the day while their well-rested counterparts registered an average of 105/57 mm Hg at nighttime and 117/72 during the daytime.

In addition to confirming that inadequate sleep results in higher blood pressure, the experiment revealed a higher nighttime heart rate in sleep-deprived subjects than those who experienced normal sleep.

This new study seems to confirms previous findings by the National Sleep Foundation which suggests that decrease in sleep quantity and quality can lead to hypertension and heart disease, as well as possible mood and memory problems.

I think I’m going to bed earlier from now on!

Continue Reading