In simple words, a new research study reveals a surprising link between how much you sleep and snore, and how you fare if diagnosed with breast cancer.
According to the study, women who typically slept less than the recommended 7 hours per night and often snored before their cancer diagnosis had worse outcomes compared to others.
This was particularly true for women diagnosed with breast cancer.
Those who reported sleeping 6 hours or less per night and snoring at least 5 nights a week before their diagnosis were twice as likely to pass away from breast cancer than patients who got 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night and hardly ever snored.
Amanda Phipps, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the University of Washington, stated, “We were surprised to find that snoring, particularly in combination with not getting enough sleep, had such a strong link with the survival rates for certain types of cancer.”
The research included 21,230 women who had been diagnosed with their first primary invasive cancer.
This means a type of cancer that can spread to other parts of the body. These women were participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study of women after menopause. They provided information on several sleep habits, including sleep duration, snoring, and insomnia.
The researchers also took into account potential factors that could affect the results, like age at enrollment, type of cancer, marital status, income, smoking habits, physical activity, and the gap between when the sleep data was collected and when the cancer was diagnosed.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommends that adults, including high school students, get at least 7 hours of sleep each night. According to the AASM, sleeping less than this is linked with a range of bad health effects.
Dr. Nathaniel Watson, president of the AASM, emphasized, “Getting enough quality sleep should be one of everyone’s top health priorities.”
Researchers had little information about how sleep affects cancer survival in humans until now.
But studies on mice have shown that continuous sleep problems may make tumors grow faster and shorten cancer survival. One theory is that poor sleep can upset the body’s normal inflammation processes, which might help cancer develop and progress.
Phipps concluded, “This research highlights the significant role that sleep plays in our overall health. Unlike many factors that can influence cancer risk and outcomes, sleep is something that we can control. So, these findings give us one more reason to prioritize good sleep.”
