Friday, November 19, 2021

Can Sleepless Nights Increase Your Risk of Aneurysms?

In a study of 70,000 adults, researchers discovered people who are predisposed to insomnia have a higher risk of aneurysms. An aneurysm is a spot in an artery wall that weakens which allows it to bulge out and sometimes burst. The study included over 10,000 European adults who had a brain aneurysm or suffered from a ruptured aneurysm. These people were compared to over 59,000 people who did not have any known brain aneurysms. The findings reinforce that high blood pressure, smoking, and insomnia are high risk factors for aneurysms compared to those without these genetic predispositions. A 24% increase in risk was found relating to insomnia. There was little evidence to support that predispositions to obesity and high blood fats increase this risk. The American Heart Association says there is a link between high blood pressure and poor sleep. Treating people with sleep disorders can lower blood pressure therefore lowering the risk of these aneurysms. A healthy diet and regular exercise can also lower blood pressure. Those who carry genetic variants that raise the odds of insomnia, high blood pressure, or smoking have a higher chance of an aneurysm occurring. 
Brain aneurysms can go unnoticed until it is too late, and they ruptured. Lowering the risk of these occurring is the first step in preventing them. Approximately 2.5% of intracranial aneurysms will rupture which is a large percentage considering they are highly fatal. The studies were only conducted on people of European descent, so these findings may be a false representation of the entire world population. The findings in this study can be useful in developing possible preventions and therapies. 

2 comments:

  1. I wonder what the prime age range is to start having aneurysms as I know a lot of college students do not have a sufficient sleep schedule at all. I would love to now how many students who have insomnia are affected by aneurysms. I hope there will be more of a concern for schools and workplaces to value the sleep of an individual so there are less health risks like this.

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  2. This is scary because sometimes a lack of sleep is out of your control or can be for many reasons. This can include work, everyday stress, insomnia, etc. We have to take care of our bodies to the best of our abilities in order to prevent things like this from occurring.. but sometimes there are things we cannot help and that puts us in harms way for something like this to happen.

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