Daytime dozing may signal heart disease risk

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who are often sleepy during the day tend to have underlying conditions that raise their risk of heart attack and stroke, according to a large new study. Based on data for more than 84,000 U.S. women, researchers linked daytime sleepiness to a more than doubled cardiovascular risk, but they say sleep disorders and other illnesses are really to blame, making the drowsiness a symptom, not a cause. “We thought that it was most likely that the daytime sleepiness was associated with insufficient sleep, shift work, snoring, and sleep adequacy,” which are themselves associated with metabolic disorders like diabetes that are risk factors for stroke and heart attack, he said. One question asked how often a woman felt her daily activities were affected because she felt sleepy, and responses could range from “rarely” or “never” to “almost every day.” The researchers kept track of other factors like shift work, aspirin use, diabetes and high blood pressure every two years until 2009.



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