FINDINGS: Sleep loss increases the heart rate and sympathetic catecholamine levels in alcoholics, compared with non-alcoholics, disrupting cardiovascular health. Increases persist after nights of partial and recovery sleep. The findings suggest habitual sleep loss may play a role in tremor, anxiety, high blood pressure and irregular heartbeat in alcoholics.
IMPACT: Behavioral, relaxation or biofeedback treatments proven effective for chronic insomnia may ease sleep abnormalities and accompanying physiological abnormalities in alcoholics.
AUTHOR: Dr. Michael R. Irwin, director of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, and professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
FUNDERS: National Institutes of Health and the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.
JOURNAL: Hypertension (Jan. 10 online edition). See http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/45/2/252 .