Insomnia may mean threefold increase in death risk
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/06/2010 (5789 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
DYING for a good night’s sleep? That may be truer than you think. New research suggests chronic insomnia may increase the risk of an earlier death by threefold.
Researchers who followed more than 2,000 residents of Wisconsin for up to 19 years found the risk of death was three times higher among those who reported symptoms of chronic insomnia versus those without insomnia.
The study involved 2,242 Wisconsin State employees — median age 45 — who completed three mailed surveys, in 1989, 1994 and 2000. About half of the subjects were also seen in a sleep lab. All were asked to report how often they experienced difficulty falling asleep, problems getting back to sleep, awakening repeatedly, or waking too early.
People were considered to have chronic insomnia if they reported any of those symptoms frequently — more than five times per month — on at least two surveys.
A death-certificate search in May determined 128 people had died in the follow-up period.
Overall, the rate of death was two to three times higher in people with chronic insomnia, regardless of which subtype they reported. The finding held after researchers took into account age, body mass index, alcohol use, smoking, depression and chronic conditions such as stroke, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, asthma and sleep-disordered breathing.
“Insomnia is not benign,” says lead author Laurel Finn, a biostatistician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will be presenting her research Monday at Sleep, the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, in San Antonio, Texas.
“People have this complaint but they don’t do anything about it. They should seek help,” said co-author Dr. Terry Young, a professor in the department of population health sciences at the university’s school of medicine and public health. “Many studies have been done showing that poor sleep is related to adverse health outcomes.”
— Canwest News Service