Canberra: In a groundbreaking discovery, Australian research has unveiled a significant link between snoring and elevated blood pressure.
According to the study, conducted by sleep scientists from Flinders University in South Australia, people who regularly snore at night are more likely to have elevated blood pressure and uncontrolled hypertension, Xinhua news agency reported.
Hypertension occurs when the pressure in a person’s blood vessels is too high. It can cause serious damage to the heart and lead to heart attack, stroke, heart failure and heart disease.
Blood pressure is recorded in millimetres of mercury (mmHg) as two numbers, such as 120/80. The first number, systolic blood pressure, measures the pressure in the arteries as the heart pumps out blood, and the second, diastolic blood pressure, is the pressure as the heart relaxes before the next beat.
The study found that 15 percent of 12,287 participants snored for more than 20 percent of the night on average over a six-month monitoring period and that those with high snoring levels had 3.8 mmHg higher systolic blood pressure and 4.5 mmHg higher diastolic blood pressure than participants who did not snore.
The Flinders University study, the first of its kind, used multiple night home-based monitoring technologies to investigate the link between snoring and hypertension over a prolonged period. The participants, predominantly middle-aged and male, have opened the door for further research in this area.
“For the first time, we can objectively say that there is a significant connection between regular nighttime snoring and high blood pressure,” Bastien Lechat, lead author of the research from the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University, said in a media release on Wednesday.
These results underscore the importance of considering snoring as a crucial factor in healthcare and treatment for sleep-related issues, particularly in the context of managing hypertension. This new understanding could potentially save lives and improve the quality of life for many.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.28 billion adults aged 30-79 years worldwide have hypertension and that 46 per cent of adults with hypertension are unaware they have the condition.
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–IANS
