A new study is making a huge claim about sleep, and particularly regarding those who have trouble getting to sleep: researchers at the European Society of Cardiology have just discoverd that there may be a link between insomnia and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

The findings, which were published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, add to the growing volume of research about how important sleep is to our bodies and brains in so many different ways, but the level of impact it is how on our risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease surprised scientists.

The study examined 15 cohort studies involving 160,867 participants, with a follow-up of between three and 29.6 years that included 11,702 adverse events. They found increased risks of between 1.27 and 1.11 in terms of heart disease and stroke for those who had difficulty getting to sleep, maintaining sleep, or getting non-restorative sleep compared to those who did not have any insomnia symptoms.

“Sleep is important for biological recovery and takes around a third of our lifetime, but in modern society more and more people complain of insomnia,” said first author Qiao He, a Master’s degree student at China Medical University, Shenyang, China. “For example, it is reported that approximately one-third of the general population in Germany has suffered from insomnia symptoms.”

“Researchers have found associations between insomnia and poor health outcomes,” continued Miss He. “But the links between insomnia and heart disease or stroke have been inconsistent.”