According to a study published in the European Heart Journal-Open, people who sleep for less than five hours a night are at a 74% increased risk of developing peripheral artery disease (PAD) in comparison to people who sleep for seven to eight hours. At present, more than 200 million people worldwide have peripheral artery disease (PAD), which is characterized by blocked arteries in the legs. These blocked arteries restrict the blood flow, thereby increasing the risk of stroke and heart attack.

The study enrolled more than 650,000 people to analyze the relationships between sleep duration during the day and its association with PAD risk. They also tried to determine the causality of the associations. The findings of the study showed that, in comparison to a sleeping duration of seven to eight hours a night, sleeping for less than five hours was linked to a roughly doubled incidence of PAD.

This finding was supported by further studies, which included 156,582 and 452,028 individuals, respectively. In the causal studies, short sleep was associated with an increased risk of PAD and vice versa. Dr. Shuai Yuan of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, stated that these results showed that short night-time sleep increased the chance of developing PAD, whereas having PAD also increased the risk of getting insufficient sleep.

In an observational investigation including 53,416 adults, it was seen that sleeping for longer than seven to eight hours per night was associated with a 24% increased risk of PAD. Daytime nappers had a 32% higher risk of PAD than those who did not nap. However, long periods of sleep or napping and PAD were not found to be causally related. 

(Source: https://www.daijiworld.com/news/newsDisplay?newsID=1060789 )