Snoozing your alarm raises risk of dangerous health problem
IT’S something most of us are guilty of - snoozing the alarm repeatedly in the morning.
But a new study warns it could have negative health costs.
Researchers found that those who have repeated alarms are more likely to have a higher heart rate compared with those who get up straight away.
The University of Notre Dame study also found snoozers were more likely to spend the last hour before waking in a light sleep, constantly being buzzed by their alarm.
But those who didn’t snooze get the benefit of a deeper sleep in their last hour, reported, suggesting they get more, better quality sleep overall.
The same university has previously found that high resting heart rate could be a key factor that links poor sleep and heart disease.
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Another of their studies found that people who go to bed even 30 minutes later than their usual bedtime tend to have a higher resting heart rate throughout the night and often into the following day.
These sleep habits are a concern because an elevated resting heart rate is a known risk factor for heart disease, as well as diabetes.
For example, found that men at the age of 50 with a resting heart rate of more than 75 beats per minute were twice as likely to die of heart disease during the next 20 years than those with a resting heart rate of 55 beats per minute or less.
Another found that a high resting heart rate in men was linked with lower physical fitness and higher blood pressure, body weight, and levels of circulating blood fats.
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The higher a person’s resting heart rate, the greater the risk of premature death.
It comes after scientists in France claimed that seven in ten heart attacks and strokes would be prevented if we all got a good night’s sleep.
Researchers followed 7,203 healthy over-50s for a decade, scoring them zero to five for sleep length and quality.
Most got three or four. Just one in ten had top marks.
The heart attack and stroke risk was 75 per cent lower in the best rested than the worst.
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The danger fell 22 per cent for each sleep point score rise, a European Society of Cardiology meeting in Barcelona heard.
Heart attacks and stroke kill 100,000 Brits a year, meaning tens of thousands of lives could be saved with the recommended seven to eight hours shut-eye a night.