Too Much or Too Little Sleep Raises Death Risk

Change in sleep duration during midlife is associated in a U - shaped fashion with risk for death more than a decade later.
The major cause for 2.4 -fold increased death rate for people who usually slept 6 to 8 hours, but due to life circumstances were forced to limit their sleep to 5 hours or less a night, was cardiovacular .
In subjects who increased their sleep duration from 6-8 hours to 9 hours or more there was adjusted 2.1 fold increase in non-cardiovascular mortality.
Sleep deprivation is associated with hypertension, diabetes and weight gain, all of which increase cardiovascular risk.
But the mechanism for the relationship between long sleepand increased mortality is unclear.
Depression and cancer related fatigue are hypothesis worthy of investigation.

Study Challenges Hypertension Treatment Guidelines

For decades doctors were treating high blood pressure with water pills as first medicine to start with .
The new landmark study ( Accomplish Study) will make this approach the thing of the past.
Accomplish Study was conducted on high risk hypertensive patients who were divided into 2 groups.
One group was given traditional pill consisting of Ace Inhibitor and Water pill combination, the other Combination of Ace inhibitor and Calcium Channel Blocker.
Study was stopped early for ethical reasons after reported 20% lower cardiovascular event rate in the second group.
The water pill should be the third and not the first drug to treat hypertension said Dr. Bakris, professor of medicineand director of the hypertensive disease unit at the University of Chicago.