Bad sleeping 'doubles heart risk'

I saw this news bit on BBC News. I says there that people who have too much or too little or disrupted sleep are linked a to doubled risk of a fatal cardiovascular disease.

Hmmm... No wonder my health has gotten worse lately.

The news article said:

Researcher Professor Francesco Cappuccio said: "Fewer hours sleep and greater levels of sleep disturbance have become widespread in industrialised societies.

"This change, largely the result of sleep curtailment to create more time for leisure and shift-work, has meant that reports of fatigue, tiredness and excessive daytime sleepiness are more common than a few decades ago.

"Sleep represents the daily process of physiological restitution and recovery, and lack of sleep has far-reaching effects."

Curiously, the researchers also found that those individuals who increased their sleep to eight hours or more a night were more than twice as likely to die during the period of the study as those who had not changed their habit.

Professor Cappuccio said lack of sleep had been linked to an increased risk of weight gain, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

However, he said the link between too much sleep and poor health was less clear, although he suggested that staying in bed for prolonged periods could be a sign of depression, or, in some cases, cancer-related fatigue.

"Our findings indicate that consistently sleeping around seven hours per night is optimal for health and a sustained reduction may predispose to ill-health."

This news article is interesting to me because of what I have gone through lately and still going through somehow. I knew that my blood pressure problem is related to my sleep problem. I also had a feeling that my weight gain is due to stress, which is also affecting my sleep.

People in the call center industry should be strongly aware of this. There are certain centers that change schedules as often as every week. They should re-consider fixing schedules. These centers will someday be in serious trouble if they don't.