Women Who Get Less than 6 Hours of Sleep Per Night at Greater Risk for Heart Attack

A new study suggests that women who get less than six hours of sleep per night may be at a greater risk for heart attack.

Lead author Aric Prather, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said poor sleep, or rather, waking up too early, can actually raise the levels of inflammation among women with coronary heart disease.

Researchers note what's particularly interesting about the study is that while inflammation affected women, it did not affect men, even after things such as lifestyle and demographics were taken into account, according to Prather.

"Inflammation is a well-known predictor of cardiovascular health," Prather said in a statement, according to UPI. "Now we have evidence that poor sleep appears to play a bigger role than we had previously thought in driving long-term increases in inflammation levels and may contribute to the negative consequences often associated with poor sleep."

This five-year study began back in 2000 and involved nearly 700 participants. The men were 66 while the women were 64.

The results of the study show that women reported very poor or fairly poor sleep quality at 2.5 times the level of inflammation as men did, who said they slept very poorly.

The results regarding the study are published in the Journal of Psychiatric research.