Study Dismisses Link Between Insomnia and High Blood Pressure

iStock/Thinkstock(TORONTO) — Does worrying about insomnia keep you awake at night?

While that sounds like a joke, people who have problems sleeping do often worry about the reported side effects of insomnia, which include hypertension.

Or are the reports of a link between high blood pressure and a lack of sleep overblown? Dr. Nicholas Vozoris, a respirologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, might have encouraging news.

Vozoris says that the 30 percent of adults with insomnia should not worry about it causing high blood pressure because previous studies on the subject were too small to gauge accurate results.

Vozoris said he poured over data that involved 13,000 Americans who were asked about insomnia symptoms and whether they had taken medication for sleeplessness or hypertension.

His findings were that “there were generally no associations between insomnia and high blood pressure, even among people who were suffering from insomnia the most often.”

Not only might the study put millions of people’s minds at ease but Vozoris says it should also prompt physicians to ease up prescribing sleep meds if they previously thought there was some connection between insomnia and hypertension.


Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio

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