Sleep and its Relationship with Cardiovascular Diseases

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of global morbidity and mortality. Besides imparting enormous human suffering, they inflict huge direct and indirect financial costs on the worldwide society. With the ready availability of affordable therapeutics globally, and the relative slowdown in the introduction of newer modalities, lifestyle interventions are gaining importance to further control this epidemic. Sleep is one such modifiable lifestyle factor. Improper sleep is consistently and strongly related with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality. Therefore, maintenance of a good sleep regimen and treatment of sleep related disorders has become an important goal in the quest for further improving global cardiovascular health. This paper briefly reviews the effects of sleep on cardiovascular diseases.