How Does Sleep Affect Your Blood Pressure?

If you’re not sleeping well — and 1 in 3 Americans isn’t getting the right amount of uninterrupted sleep each night — the deprivation can play out in myriad ways. While dragging through your day might be an obvious consequence, lack of solid, restorative sleep can also affect your blood pressure, not in a good way.

The three principles of good health include nutrition, exercise, and sleep — and high blood pressure can stem from poor practices in any of these areas.

In the following, the team of healthcare experts at Temecula Medical Group, including Dr. Richard H. Rawson, Ryan D. Rowan, PA-C, and Armanda L. Alvarez, FNP-C, is going to focus on the connection between sleep and your blood pressure.

When you get a good night’s rest

Under ideal circumstances, you get 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep that allows you to cycle through different sleep stages to reach deep sleep, which we also refer to as your body’s recovery mode.

During your deep sleep, many things occur, such as:

• Your brain sifts through events and creates memories
• Your breathing and heart rates slow
• Your muscles relax
• Your body makes metabolic (hormonal) adjustments

Your body also uses this time to scan itself and make (or at least initiate) any necessary repairs.

When you’re not getting enough sleep

Going in reverse from what we’ve just discussed above, you can see how not getting enough sleep can cause health and wellness issues that range from fatigue to memory loss.

When it comes to your cardiovascular health, if your heart doesn't have the opportunity to slow down during deep sleep, it can lead to high blood pressure, which is the pressure of the blood against the walls of your arteries.

Nearly half of adults in the United States have high blood pressure, and given the high number of sleep-deprived people in this country, we can surmise that poor sleep contributes to this high hypertension.

The role of sleep apnea

There are many reasons why many Americans aren’t getting the sleep they need, but one of the more concerning is obstructive sleep apnea, which affects about 30 million people.

Sleep apnea is an even more direct road to high blood pressure as this condition not only interrupts sleep but also creates stress in your body. When you have sleep apnea, soft tissues at the back of your throat collapse while you sleep. When this happens, your brain rouses you just enough to clear your airways so you can breathe again. Once is bad enough, but this collapse-and-clear cycle can happen many, many times throughout the night.

As a result, between 50% and 60% of people with obstructive sleep apnea have daytime hypertension.

The bottom line is that your sleep quality can greatly impact your blood pressure — in both directions. If you’d like to improve both areas of your health, we’re here to help.

For excellent blood pressure management, please contact our Temecula, California, office or visit our office from 8:30am to 5:30pm, Monday-Friday.