He insomnia It affects between 10 and 30% of the general population, and women are affected by this sleep disorder approximately one and a half times more than men. Sex hormones play an important role in the regulation of sleep and during menopausethe sudden decrease in estrogen and progesterone, which promote sleep onset and sleep continuity, leads to worsening insomnia.
The greater predisposition of women to develop disorders such as anxiety and depression also contributes to promoting insomniawhich causes symptoms such as irritability, drowsiness, lack of attention, low motivation and mood disturbances that interfere with social, work and family life.
However, women should not resign themselves to this situation. A study carried out on 66,122 women over 16 years with biannual controls, published in the journal Hypertension by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston led by Eva Schernhammeropens the door to a new possibility of intervention and control of insomnia through a modifiable factor with the help of the doctor: hypertension, which in women has turned out to be closely related to insomnia.
Not only that, sleep disorders can become an early indicator of the risk of hypertension, since the close correlation between both disorders offers the possibility of an early marker for a disease that is affecting women at increasingly younger ages ( around 30 years old) and increasing, almost reaching men, who have always been the gender most affected by hypertension and were only surpassed by women with the arrival of menopause. The damage caused by hypertension is greater in women compared to men, as can be seen in the preeclampsia during pregnancy, which puts the mother and fetus at risk.
The American study shows that the risk of hypertension is higher in people who sleep 5 hours, while it is lower in women who sleep 7-8 hours and zero in those who sleep at least 9 hours. Waking up early was not associated with this risk, nor were correlations observed with night work, such as that of call centers or flight attendants subjected to jet lag during intercontinental flights, situations that can alter the chronotypethat is, the automatic rhythms of wakefulness and sleep.