If you’re a woman past menopause, listen up: new research shows that 1 in 4 women like you could develop an irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation (AFib) during your lifetime.
This isn’t just a minor inconvenience. AFib can lead to serious problems like blood clots, strokes, and heart failure.
With more than 12 million Americans expected to have AFib by 2030, it’s becoming a major public health concern.
The Research: Linking Stress and Sleep to Heart Health
The study was led by Susan X. Zhao, a heart doctor in California. She and her team looked at data from more than 83,000 women aged 50-79, who answered questionnaires about their lives and health.
These questions covered topics like stressful events they’d gone through, how well they slept, their general outlook on life, and the kind of social support they had.
Dr. Zhao found that a lot of women in perfect physical health were struggling with poor sleep and stress, which seemed to make them more likely to develop AFib.
“Your emotional well-being and life stress could be the missing puzzle pieces in understanding why some people get AFib,” she said.
What They Found: Stress and Sleep Quality Matter
After following these women for about 10 years, the study found that roughly 25%, or nearly 24,000 women, ended up with AFib. They discovered two main factors that mattered:
For every extra point on the insomnia scale (which measures how well you sleep), there was a 4% higher chance of getting AFib.
For every extra point on the stressful life event scale, there was a 2% higher chance of getting AFib.
So, both stress and poor sleep had a noticeable effect on whether these women developed this heart condition.
Dr. Zhao also mentioned that the connection between the heart and the brain has been well-known in medicine.
Stress and poor sleep, both of which affect your brain, also seem to mess with your heart’s electrical system. That’s probably why these things are linked to AFib.
What’s Next? More Research Needed
Now, this study isn’t the final word. It mainly used questionnaires filled out at the start of the research, which is not the most reliable method.
And while it’s clear that stress and poor sleep are linked to AFib, we don’t yet know if they actually cause AFib or how long you have to be stressed or sleep-deprived for it to be a problem.
More research is needed to confirm these findings and to figure out how to reduce these new risk factors.
A Final Thought
This is particularly important as women are living longer lives. We already know that things like high blood pressure and obesity are bad for your heart.
Now, it seems that chronic stress and how well you sleep might also play a role in developing heart problems. If you’re an older woman—or care about one—these findings are definitely something to lose sleep over.
Or rather, something to make you want to manage your stress and get a good night’s sleep.
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