Disorders of sleep and cardiovascular disease

Abstract

Despite decades of effort, one of the greatest mysteries in biology is to understand sleep. Sleep is more than simply rest. Depriving someone of sleep has powerful adverse effects on their mental, metabolic, and cardiovascular health. The timing of sleep also plays an important role in terms of the onset of cardiovascular events. Finally, the effects of sleep on ventilation and the downstream effects of sleep apnea in the pathogenesis of all cardiovascular conditions have come of age in the evidence-based medicine field.