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When Achea Redd used to go for annual checkups, she tried to discuss her restrictive eating patterns with her doctors and her fear that she might have an eating disorder. But because her body mass index (BMI) was in the “overweight” category, Redd’s primary care physicians refused to consider the possibility that she might be depriving herself of food and instead counseled her to lose weight, she said.
It wasn’t until two years ago when Redd, a Black woman, was 38 that a therapist diagnosed her with “atypical anorexia,” a condition that doesn’t present with low body weight. Even then, her insurance wouldn’t cover treatment because of her BMI category. “Getting a doctor, a medical doctor, to sign off on me having an eating disorder was impossible,” she said. Redd began paying up to $800 out of pocket monthly to work with a therapist and dietitian.
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People who clock six to seven hours of sleep a night had the lowest chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke when compared with those who got less or more sleep, according to a study being presented at the American College of Cardiology s 70th Annual Scientific Session. This trend remained true even after the research team accounted for other known conditions or risk factors for heart disease or stroke.
The study, according to researchers, is the first to explore the association between baseline cardiovascular risk and duration of sleep and adds to mounting evidence that sleep similar to diet, smoking and exercise may play a defining role in someone s cardiovascular risk.
Breathing in secondhand cigarette smoke may leave you more vulnerable to heart failure, a condition where the heart isn t pumping as well as it should and has a hard time meeting the body s needs, according to a study being presented at the American College of Cardiology s 70th Annual Scientific Session.
Studying the connection between sleep & heart health.
For this retrospective study, researchers looked at data collected in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked responses from over 14,000 people for a median of 7.5 years. Those surveyed were 46 years old on average, half were women, and 53% were not white.
Researchers were specifically looking for how much sleep the participants were getting, as well as their atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk scores, and their levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an inflammatory marker linked with heart disease.
Interestingly, they noticed there seemed to be a sweet spot of sleep length that was associated with a low ASCVD risk score (a higher score can indicate greater likeliness of heart attack or stroke): Those who slept six to seven hours a night actually had the lowest chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke, compared to those who got less