The organization recommends healthy sleep habits for ideal cardiac health along with other well known factors like blood pressure, cholesterol, diet, glucose, weight, smoking, and physical activity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that adults who sleep less than 7 hours per day are more likely to have chronic health conditions including heart attack, coronary heart disease, and stroke compared to those with adequate amount of sleep.In a study that followed over 160,000 healthy, non-obese adults, the subjects who self-reported sleep duration less than 6 hours a day were at an increased risk for developing multiple cardiometabolic risk factors. They presented with increased central obesity, elevated fasting glucose, hypertension, low high-density lipoprotein, hypertriglyceridemia, and metabolic syndrome. The presence or lack of insomnia symptoms did not modify the effects of sleep duration in this study.The United Kingdom Biobank studied nearly 500,000 adults who had no cardiovascular disease, and the subjects who slept less than 6 hours a day were associated with a 20 percent increase in the risk of developing myocardial infarction (MI) over 7 years of follow-up period. Interestingly, long sleep duration of more than 9 hours a night was also a risk factor. Immunosuppression
Among the myriad of health consequences that sleep deprivation can cause, disruption of the immune system is one of them. While it is not clearly understood, researchers believe that sleep is essential to providing sufficient energy for the immune system to work and allow inflammation to take place during sleep.
Haverhill fever (or epidemic arthritic erythema) is a systemic illness caused by the bacterium Streptobacillus moniliformis, an organism common in rats and mice. If untreated, the illness can have a mortality rate of up to 13%. Among the two types of rat-bite fever, Haverhill fever caused by Streptobacillus moniliformis is most common in North America. The other type of infection caused by Spirillum minus is more common in Asia and is also known as Sodoku.The initial non-specific presentation of the disease and hurdles in culturing the causative microorganism are at times responsible for a delay or failure in the diagnosis of the disease. Although non-specific in nature, initial symptoms like relapsing fever, rash and migratory polyarthralgia are the most common symptoms of epidemic arthritic erythema.Bites and scratches from rodents carrying the bacteria are generally responsible for the affliction. However, the disease can be spread even without physical lacerations by rodents. In fact, the disease was first recognized from a milk-associated outbreak which occurred in Haverhill, Massachusetts in January, 1926. The organism S. moniliformis was isolated from the patients and epidemiologically, consumption of milk from one particular dairy was implicated in association with the infection. Hence, ingestion of food and drink contaminated with the bacteria can also result in the development of the disease. Symptoms and signs
The illness resembles a severe influenza, with a moderate fever (38-40 °C, or 101-104 °F), sore throat, chills, myalgia, headache, vomiting, and a diffuse red rash (maculopapular, petechial, or purpuric), located mostly on the hands and feet.