However, CRP was not associated with total sleep time or sleep disturbance.
“The association is relatively small, so there’s no cause for alarm currently—however, more specific research should be pursued,” says C. Noel Bairey Merz, director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
“Specifically, whether poor sleep leads to higher inflammation or whether higher inflammation leads to poor sleep is a critical question,” she says in an email.
Night-time snacking, low physical activity and belly fat raise systemic inflammatory markers and contribute to poor sleep, adds Merz, who was not involved in the study.
“There is quite a lot of experimental and epidemiological evidence that has shown that disturbances in sleep are associated with disease and death,” says Susan Redline, a senior physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.
“If a woman is having persistent trouble sleeping lasting more than a few weeks, they should talk with their primary care doctor. If the problem can’t be readily addressed, ask to speak to a sleep specialist,” Redline, who was not involved in the research, says in a telephone interview.
The American College of Physicians recommends that all adult patients receive cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.
Among the study’s limitations is that it measured sleep activity for only three days and at just one point in time, the authors acknowledge. The study doesn’t prove that poor sleep causes changes in inflammation. It also did not examine any health effects of the increased inflammatory markers that were observed in women who slept poorly.
“I hope this study underscores the need to treat sleep problems so we can improve a woman’s inflammatory profile and prevent chronic conditions like vascular disease or diabetes,” Nowakowski says.
Reference
- Nowakowski S, Matthews KA, von Känel R, et al. Sleep characteristics and inflammatory biomarkers among midlife women. Sleep. 2018 Mar 30. [Epub ahead of print]
