A BAD night’s sleep can mean more than a grouchy morning of yawning afterwards.
Now scientists believe that struggling to get regular decent kip could also double your chance of being diagnosed with asthma.
GettyHow well you sleep could have a role in your genetic risk for asthma[/caption]
A major UK Biobank study, published in the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research, has revealed that a healthy sleeping pattern could help you reduce your genetic risk of developing the common lung condition.
Asthma can cause breathing problems and often starts in childhood.
While it’s manageable day-to-day with inhalers, sufferers can experience complications, and there is a risk of severe, life-threatening asthma attacks.
The Biobank study set out to see whether the poor sleep and insomnia people with asthma often report, has an impact on the risk of having asthma or not, and whether quality sleep reduce that risk.
They considered healthy sleep patterns to include seven to nine hours of sleep a night, no or rare bouts of insomnia, no snoring and feeling alert during the day AKA not needing to nap.
The researchers assessed more than 450,000 adults aged 38-73 across nine years.
Respiratory health was tracked up to the date of receiving an asthma diagnosis, a participant’s death, or until 31 March 2017, whichever of the three came first.
Overall, participants who had a high genetic risk for asthma were found to be 47 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with the condition, and if they had poor sleep to boot, they were 55 per cent more likely.
The study authors wrote: “Considering that poor sleep combined with high genetic susceptibility yielded a greater than twofold asthma risk, sleep patterns could be recommended as an effective lifestyle intervention to prevent future asthma, especially for individuals with high-risk genetics.”
The researchers accept that this was an observational study, and as a result, they can’t establish cause, which does limit the findings.
Signs and symptoms
The key signs of asthma include:
a whistling sound when breathing (wheezing)
breathlessness
a tight chest, which may feel like a band is tightening around it
coughing
symptoms can sometimes get temporarily worse. This is known as an asthma attack
Source: NHS