Researchers conclude that teens who sleep less than 7.7 hours each night are more likely to have hypertension issues. 

The new research presented on Thursday at an American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans indicates that those suffering through both insomnia and a lack of sleep are five times more likely to have high blood pressure exceeding 140 systolic.

“While we need to explore this association in larger studies on teens, it is safe to say that sleep health matters for heart health, and we should not wait until adulthood to address it,” said senior researcher Julio Fernandez-Mendoza as quoted by UPI.

“Not all teens who complain of insomnia symptoms are at risk for cardiovascular issues,” he added in a news release.

“However, monitoring their sleep duration objectively can help us identify those who have a more severe form of insomnia and are at-risk for heart problems,” he said.

For the study, 421 students were recruited at three school districts in and around Harrisburg, Pa.

The teenagers were questioned by the researchers and told whether or not they deal with insomnia and then stayed in a lab overnight to observe their sleep cycle and duration. The data was gathered between 2010 and 2013.

The researchers took blood pressure readings of the children two to three hours before lights out in the sleep lab.

“We know that disturbed and insufficient sleep is associated with high blood pressure in adults, particularly in adults who report insomnia and sleep objectively less than six hours, but we do not yet know if these associations exist in adolescents,” Fernandez-Mendoza said.

Teens whose numbers exceeded 120/80 were deemed with elevated blood pressure and those with a reading of 140/90 or higher were considered to have a full-fledged high blood pressure.

The combination of insomnia and poor sleep increased risk of high blood pressure five-fold, teens who reported to be insomniac but got more than 7.7 hours of sleep in the lab didn’t pose to be at risk of either elevated or high blood pressure.

“Our findings are important because they call attention to the need to listen to teens who complain of disturbed sleep, to monitor and assess their sleep objectively and help them improve it in order to prevent heart problems early,” first author Axel Robinson, a 17-year-old senior at Pelham Memorial High School in Pelham, NY, said in a news release.

The research hasn’t finished and is ongoing with collecting data from the same children who are now aged 20 to 33 years old.

“This study adds to the limited knowledge base about the relation between poor sleep and risk of hypertension during a crucial life stage of development,” AHA spokeswoman Brooke Aggarwal said in a news release.

“Prevention of heart disease is key, and it begins with the adoption of a healthy lifestyle in childhood and adolescence, including optimal sleep,” said Aggarwal, an assistant professor of medical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study. “Setting healthy sleep patterns during the teenage years could carry over into adulthood”.

Similarly, she added, “sleep problems that occur during the teen years tend to persist over time and could predispose individuals to increased cardiovascular risk later in life.”