Reducing Your Risk of Stroke With Sleep

I just read an article about the things we can do in our everyday lives to reduce our risk of stroke and in a nut shell they include eating right, exercising and getting enough sleep. But, until now, researchers didn’t realize the importance of sleep.

Studies showed that those who slept 7 to 8 hours a night were 25% less likely to suffer from a stroke. If you add 30 to 60 minutes of exercise three to six days a week, your stroke risk could decrease even more from there.

Those who got less sleep than the “required” 7 to 8 hours showed that they were 22% more likely to suffer a stroke. It’s been shown that lack of sleep is linked to high blood pressure, so that makes sense. Less sleep can mean less energy, which means we might not make it to the gym. Less sleep can cause us to eat certain foods to make up for the lack of energy, which might not be good food choices.

But, here’s the big surprise, those who slept more than 8 hours a night showed a 146% chance of suffering a stroke. A 146 percent! That’s incredible. The question is, is it the extra sleep and lack of exercise or is it a medical condition, such as obesity or depression keeping us in bed that is the cause of the increase in stroke risk.

So, maybe it’s not sleep after all, that decreases our chance of stroke. Maybe it’s exercise and in order to exercise we need to get enough sleep so we have the energy to hit the gym. But no matter, what I learned is that sleep is very important to all of us, so hit that pillow.

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