A study of sleep duration, body mass index and blood pressure in an adult Kashmiri population

Abstract

Background: Sleep is influenced by the circadian rhythms (regular body changes in mental and physical characteristics that occur in the course of about 24 hours). Lack of a good night’s sleep results in a variety of negative health and cognitive issues, which makes it critical to study the prevalence of sleep deficiency and its effects on an individual’s physical and mental health. Aim of study was to access the association of sleep duration with body mass index and blood pressure in an adult Kashmiri population. Methods: The present study was done in the Postgraduate Department of Physiology, Government Medical College and Associated Hospitals, Srinagar. This study was done on 500 subjects and it was an observational, cross sectional study. Results: The prevalence of overweight/obese among short sleepers was quite high at 34.4% as compared to 11.7% and 15.2% among normal sleepers and long sleepers respectively. Among short sleepers 0% participants were hypotensive 47.5% were normotensive, 52.4% were prehypertensive/hypertensive. Conclusions: In conclusion, this study showed a statistically significant increase in the prevalence of elevated blood pressure and overweight/obese subjects among short sleepers. There was an inverse relationship of prevalence of overweight/obesity and elevated blood pressure with short sleep duration. Our study also showed a statistically significant increase in the percentage of prehypertension/hypertension among overweight/obese people with a p value of <0.001 and CHI square of 43.964.