WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- A study showed people sleeping less than six hours a night were 27 percent more likely to have increased blood vessel risks than those who sleep seven to eight hours.
The study published on Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology revealed that shorter sleep was linked to increased risks of plaque buildup in the arteries throughout the body.
Also, those with a poor quality of sleep were 34 percent more likely to have arteriosclerosis, according to the study.
This is the first study to show that objectively measured sleep is independently associated with atherosclerosis throughout the body, not just in the heart, according to the paper's senior author Jose Ordovas, a nutrition researcher at Tufts University.
The study examined nearly 4,000 bank employees in Spain with imaging techniques to detect vascular lesions in a population with an average age of 46 years and without known heart disease.
The shorter sleep duration with good quality can overcome the detrimental effects of shorter length, according to the study.
It showed that sleeping more than eight hours a night may also be associated with an increase in atherosclerosis.
