Sleep Extension and Blood Pressure

Emerging evidence suggests that approximately 30% of the US adult population sleeps less than 7 hours per night, and those who do exhibit 20-52% enhanced risk to develop cardiovascular diseases and particularly hypertension. Since sleep curtailment is largely voluntary, sleep deficiency can be corrected and its detrimental health consequences potentially reversed. The purpose of the present proposal is to investigate the cardiovascular and metabolic effects of sleep extension in prehypertensive and stage 1 hypertensive subjects who report habitual short sleep.