Risks of complications due to high blood pressure during pregnancy include:

1.    Increased risk of low birth weight due to decreased blood flow to the placenta.

2.    Placental abruption caused by the placenta separating from the uterus. This can result in heavy bleeding in the mother as well as causing the baby to be deprived of oxygen and nutrients.

3.    If the risk of serious complications due to high blood pressure is high, a premature delivery may be required.

4.    In some cases, even if a women’s blood pressure returns to normal after her pregnancy, she may be at risk of developing hypertension later in life.

What you can do to prevent complications:

1.    Make sure not to miss any prenatal appointments. These are your opportunities to regularly monitor your blood pressure and discuss any changes with your doctor.

2.    Taking medication to reduce your blood pressure—you can buy Benicar or Cardizem to help—can reduce the risk of complications. Speak to your doctor about medicines that will treat high blood pressure.

3.    Get plenty of rest and a healthy amount of exercise.

4.    Keep to a healthy, low sodium diet. Make sure to take your prenatal vitamins.

5.    While weight gain is important in supporting your baby’s development, too much weight gain can cause additional stress on your heart. So be sure to regularly monitor your weight.

6.    Avoid or quit smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs.

In contrast, neither just insomnia with a normal sleep duration of more than six hours nor a short sleep duration without insomnia was associated with a significant risk for hypertension. So this means that there is an additive or synergistic effect on hypertension risk when insomnia occurs in combination with a short sleep duration.  We do need to note that that many times, the amount that we feel we slept is different from the actual amount that we have slept, so in order to know, you’d need to go to a sleep doctor for assessment.  The study was cross-sectional so it did not allow for causality to be determined, but the authors note that large amounts of clinical and research data indicate that it is most likely that insomnia leads to hypertension and not the other way around.

Previous reports have shown that insomnia with short sleep duration is associated with hypersecretion of cortisol, increased catecholaminergic activity, increased heart rate and 24-hour metabolic rate, and impaired heart rate variability which may all lead to hypertension and other cardiovascular events.  Bottom line is that the study urges people with insomnia to seek evaluation and treatment from their medical provider.  And those of you with just insomnia and normal sleep—you may have a lower risk for physical problems but you’re still are at risk for depression what causes depression treatments and may suffer from the behavioral effects of insomnia—so you too should see your doctor!