In a recent Australian study, women who wake up at night are twice as likely to die at an early age, despite startling statistics that women are less likely than men.

Sleep waking occurs as part of the body's ability to respond to potentially dangerous situations such as noise, pain, temperature and lights.

Sleep apnea, which causes snoring, can also lead to unconscious vigilance.

And these little moments of waking up won't necessarily be remembered the next morning, but they'll make a person feel sleepy all day.

The study conducted by the Australian University of Adelaide found that if repeated, these disorders are associated with hypertension among other health problems.

Doctors say females can reduce risk by blocking sounds with earplugs or treating snoring or weight loss.

The study of 8 thousand men and women reportedly looked at "unconscious vigilance" during the night, which almost everyone is experiencing.

It should be noted that researchers used data from three separate studies in which participants wore a sleep monitor during one night's sleep.

Each of them received a degree C of the "burden of waking," which combined the number of times they woke up at night, how long they woke up, and how long they slept overall.

The lead author of the study, Matthias Bommert, and his colleagues found that women wake up less at night than men.

However, the effects appeared to be greater, particularly with regard to the risk of death from heart problems, a generic term covering conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels, such as stroke or heart attack.

Women who wake up at night more than others (6.5 percent of their sleep at night) risk dying from heart problems 60 percent to 100 percent more than women who sleep at night.

Their risk of death from cardiovascular disease was 12.8% compared to 6.7% in women who do not wake up at night.

The risk of death from all causes in women suffering from "unconscious vigilance" also increased by between 20% and 60%.

The results were less significant in men, as those who woke up at night were at risk of dying of cardiovascular disease or any cause by 13.4 percent to 33.7 percent, compared to 9.6 percent to 28 percent in men who didn't wake up much.

The co-author of the study, Dominic Lenz, from the Medical Centre of the University of Maastricht, said it was unclear why there was a gender difference, but suggested that it could be explained by differences in how the body responded to wake-up at night.