Lack Of Sleep Increases Cancer Risk
(Washington, DC) -- Inadequate sleep may increase a woman's risk of getting cancer. Researchers in Maryland studied nearly six-thousand physically active women aged 18 to 65. They found that while regular exercise generally decreased the women's risk of developing certain cancers, those benefits started to disappear in the women who didn't sleep enough. Results presented to the American Association for Cancer Research showed women in the study who slept less than seven hours a night had a 47-percent higher risk of developing cancer than their well-rested counterparts. So far researchers aren't quite sure how a lack of sleep makes a person more susceptible to developing cancer. However, chronic sleep loss has been linked to a number of conditions, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number of adults getting less than six hours of sleep a night has gone up since 1985. |