Insomnia and snoring with frequent interruption of breathing cause heart problems. Since heart patients face sleeping disorders, scientists conducted a research in this regard and managed to find a direct relationship between these two problems.
According to Live Science and quoted by the Independent, the results of this study show that heart disease causes disturbances in the production of the sleep hormone melatonin in the brain, which is due to damage to a group of nerves that innervate both the heart and the brain. or connect them together.
These nerves in the neck, as part of the autonomic nervous system responsible for involuntary body activities such as heartbeat and breathing, are connected to both the pineal gland (responsible for producing melatonin) and the heart. Heart problems determine what is wrong with the melatonin maker.
In this study, the researchers proposed a mechanism that could explain why heart patients suffer from sleep disorders.
Sleep disorders are also known as one of the complications of heart disease. 73% of heart patients have sleep problems.
In this study, scientists took samples from the brain tissue of deceased people who had cardiovascular diseases and people without heart disease and analyzed the results. They concluded that the number of nerve fibers or axons in the upper neck ganglia of deceased heart patients is much less than that of people without this disease. On the other hand, the ganglion of affected people was damaged and larger than usual.
Other tests were done on mice, which showed that there are immune cells on the upper neck ganglion of mice with heart disease, and signs of wounding and inflammation were seen on the axons of these mice. The number of axons and the amount of melatonin in the blood were lower than normal in these mice.
These researchers found that giving melatonin to these mice improves the sleep disorder and some drugs increase blood melatonin production.
