It can cause a whole host of other health issues, too, including an increased risk for heart attack, type 2 diabetes and liver problems. “And when we don’t get good quality sleep - and particularly if we’re not getting good quality sleep because our airway gets closed and our brain and our body have to maintain enough awareness to try to open up the airway - that is very, very hard on the vascular system,” Lloyd-Jones says.Īll the stress and strain drives up blood pressure - “and not just when we’re asleep, but also when we’re awake for the rest of the day,” Lloyd-Jones says. When a person with sleep apnea stops breathing, the brain steps in and wakes the body up to take a breath this can happen up to 30 times an hour. Excess weight is one of the foremost risk factors for developing sleep apnea age is another big one. as more Americans struggle with being overweight, says Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and former president of the American Heart Association. And it’s becoming increasingly common in the U.S. Sleep apnea, a sleep disorder in which a person stops and restarts breathing several times throughout the night, can cause a bump in blood pressure.

Printable sliding blood pressure chart