Working Long Hours with Little Sleep Increases Heart Risk

August 5, 2002

Men who frequently work long hours or get little sleep double their risk of having a nonfatal heart attack, according to a study by Japanese researchers.

They evaluated the cases of 260 men aged 40-79 who were admitted to hospitals with acute myocardial infarction between 1996-98. They compared the men with a control group of 445 men similar in age and residence who had not had heart attacks.

The men who worked 61 hours a week or more on average during the previous year were twice as likely to have a heart attack as the men who worked 40 hours a week or less, and the men who slept five hours or less on average each working day during the previous year had two-to-three times greater risk of having a heart attack than men who got more than five hours of sleep each night. The study was published in the July issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (website: oem.bmjjournals.com).

Sleep Improves Motor Skills

Your ability to learn motor skills increases when you've had a good night's sleep, according to a recent study by Harvard Medical School researchers. They taught groups of people to type a sequence of keys on a computer keyboard as quickly and accurately as possible. One group was trained in the morning and then re-tested 12 hours later; they were able to improve their performance by about two percent in the re-test. But subjects who were trained in the evening and re-tested 12 hours later, after a good night's sleep, improved far more-an average of 20 percent. The research also showed that the amount of improved performance correlated with the amount of Stage 2 non-REM (NREM) sleep, which usually occurs late at night. "This finding of sleep-dependent motor skill improvement may have important implications for the efficient learning of all skilled actions in humans," the study concluded. The study was published in the July 3 issue of Neuron (http://www.neuron.org/).

NSF Video News Release Reaches Millions

We're pleased to report that a video news release distributed during National Sleep Awareness Week in April reached 90 million viewers in each of the top 150 markets (major metropolitan areas), and it was broadcast more than 1,100 times. It was the most successful VNR ever distributed by NSF's production company, On The Scene Productions.

For more information visit the National Sleep Foundation's website at www.sleepfoundation.org

Source: National Sleep Foundation