TOO MUCH SLEEP?

Long sleepers may have a higher risk of stroke People who sleep particularly long may have an increased likelihood of developing a stroke. This is the outcome of a British study published in "Neurology". According to the study, the risk increases by almost 50 per cent when sleeping more than eight hours a night. In their study, researchers from the University of Cambridge included 9,692 people with an average age of 62 that had never had a stroke. The participants were asked about their sleeping habits at the beginning of the study and again four years later. During the 9.5-year follow-up period, 346 study subjects had a stroke. When associating the sleeping habits with the stroke, it showed that those who slept more than eight hours a night had a 46 per cent higher risk of stroke than those who slept the average amount of six to eight hours. And the relationship stayed the same after adjusting for various factors, such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Those study subjects who changed their daily sleeping habits from less than 6 hours to more than eight hours were even four times as likely to have a stroke. Whether or not sleep is the cause of the elevated risk, or if it is an early marker or a consequence of ill health, still needs to be researched, said the authors. In any case, a meta-analysis of previous studies had confirmed the association of sleep duration and an increased risk of stroke. INTERESTING STUDY, BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME I SLEPT EIGHT HOURS. LARRY