Want To Lower Your Blood Pressure? Get Seven Hours of Sleep Nightly

 

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Updated September 07, 2014.
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.

  If your blood pressure is difficult to get under control, you may want to ask yourself how much sleep that you are getting each night. If you are not getting six to seven hours of sleep each night this can be a major impediment to lowering your blood pressure. Sleep deprivation has major consequences above and beyond higher blood pressure, including a  weakened immune system, increased work of the adrenal glands, decrease in cognitive abilities to name a few. Those who are middle aged (both men and women) and women seem to have a higher risk of resistant hypertension due to the effects of sleep deprivation.

There are several ways that sleep deprivation can contribute to high blood pressure.

1) Sleep deprivation impairs your circadian rhythms.

2) Sleep deprivation increases insulin resistance. Lack of sleep can actually increase your risk of developing diabetes. There is a connection between numbers 1 and 2, i.e, sleeping less hours can disrupt your body's rhythms. This influences hormone production which can impair the metabolism or processing of insulin and glucose. Higher insulin levels, due to the phenomenon of insulin resistance is linked to the development of hypertension.

3) Sleep deprivation is associated with the development of endothelial dysfunction. An article from the peer-reviewed journal Sleep in March 2014 actually examined this association. This was a laboratory based study, but the results were interesting and different from what I would have expected. The connection between high blood pressure and endothelial dysfunction is well-established and each can be a cause and effect of the other. This article demonstrated that the sleep deprivation causes endothelial dysfunction independent of blood pressure. Lack of sleep in the animals in this study caused there to be a lack of production of endothelial derived relaxing factor (EDRF) which dilates the blood vessel. This hormone is important over time for keeping the blood vessels elastic and pliable. This means that sleep deprivation, independent of its effects on blood pressure, can affect the health of the blood vessels over time.

4) Sleep deprivation can exaggerate the body's stress response. I have written about in prior blog posts the effects of increased cortisol secretion on diminishing sleep quality. This article from the journal Health Psychology in May 2014 looks at this from another angle: the body's reaction to stress is magnified big time. Lack of sleep can increase the body's secretion of cortisol in response to a stressful event. Many, if not all of us, deal with multiple stressors, both physical and psychological on a daily basis. Our body's ability to deal with these stresses can be compromised because of increased cortisol production in reaction to these stressful events.

5) Lack of sleep causes weight gain. This article talks about " sleep debt" and its relation to weight gain. This is likely due to the cumulative effects of numbers 1-4 listed here in addition to other mechanisms that are theorized in the chapter. Again, sleep is important in keeping the body in balance.

How Can You Get Out of Sleep Debt?

One of the biggest ways is to shut off the cell phone, computer, smart phone and all unnecessary electronic media. This probably contributes to late nights and sleep debt. Realize that sleep is a necessary part of your life for your over health, not a commodity that can be exploited.

The more that we learn about the science of health and high blood pressure, in many ways, it means going back to the basics: eating right, exercising, and getting a good night's sleep.