Does 24 hours of total sleep deprivation affect older women and older men differently? Associate Editor Nisha Charkoudian (U.S. Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine) interviews lead author Jason Carter (Michigan Technological University) and expert Nina Stachenfeld (Yale University School of Medicine) about the innovative study by Carter and co-authors, who found a sympatho-excitatory response to the sleep deprivation protocol in older women, but not in older men. The work by Carter et al suggests that the autonomic nervous system may have a larger role in older women who are sleep deprived, which is particularly important given that older women are at higher risk of developing hypertension than their age-matched male counterparts. Carter and colleagues conclude that "the association between sleep deprivation and hypertension is real." Will this new research kickstart a push for sleep as medicine for cardiometabolic diseases? Listen and find out.

 

Jason R. Carter, Ida T. Fonkoue, Ian M. Greenlund, Christopher E. Schwartz, Babak Mokhlesi, Carl A. Smoot Sympathetic Neural Responsiveness to Sleep Deprivation in Older Adults: Sex Differences Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published July 29, 2019. DOI: doi.org/10.1152/ajpheart.00232.2019