HHS HealthBeat (March 10, 2011)

Sleep and colon cancer

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Getting enough sleep can do a lot of good for people, and one study now indicates this might include a lower risk of colon cancer.

At University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, researcher Dr. Li Li saw this in data on more than 1,200 colonoscopy patients who were asked before the screening test how much sleep they got. Li found that patients whose colonoscopies showed signs of early colon cancer tended to get less than six hours of sleep a night.

Li says the study is another sign of the importance of sleep:

``That’s one third of daily life, and has been associated with a lot of things – diabetes, obesity. Now we are adding a precursor of colon cancer.’’  (7 seconds)

The study in the journal Cancer was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011