Sleep may avert stroke risk

As some of you know, I had knee surgery recently. One of my priorities to improve my recovery is getting enough sleep.

That just makes sense.

But the lack of enough sleep might well bring about even more serious consequences, even among the young. A recent article details how insomnia may raise stroke risk:

Over the course of four years, researchers found that insomnia seemed to raise the likelihood that a person will be hospitalized due to stroke by 54 percent.

Photo from U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention

That risk skyrocketed for people between the ages of 18 and 34, who were eight times more likely to suffer strokes if they had insomnia when compared to their peers who got good sleep, the study found.

"We pay a lot of attention to high blood pressure, to obesity, to issues related to cholesterol. Those are known risk factors," said Dr. Demetrius Lopes, director of the Interventional Cerebrovascular Center at Rush University in Chicago and a spokesman for the American Heart Association. "But I think what is underrated is if you don't have a good sleep routine, how much it can harm you, especially at a young age."

Unfortunately, we live in a noisy, distracting, 24/7 world. And that makes it harder to get a good night's sleep. And that's on top of the difficulty many people have getting a good night's sleep even with ideal circumstances.

I love a good night's sleep. And now more than ever it seems, getting a good night's sleep is a serious matter.