A number of studies have been conducted to investigate the association between sleep duration and risk of stroke in middle-aged and older adults. One such study was conducted in a sample of 31,000 participants with an average age of 62 years. Information on sociodemographic characteristics and sleep duration was obtained by a self-administered questionnaire. The study took place over 6 years, during which 1,557 cases of stroke were documented. The risk of stroke was higher in participants who reported sleeping at least 9 hours per night, in comparison to the group who reported sleeping 7 to 8 hours per night; the relative risk was 1.23.

A news article reporting the results stated: "Sleeping a lot may increase the risk for stroke. A new study has found that compared with sleeping seven to eight hours a night, sleeping nine or more hours increased the relative risk for stroke by 23 percent. Maintaining appropriate sleep duration might hold great promise as primary prevention of stroke."

Write a short response to the newspaper editor explaining clearly why the article is po- tentially misleading. Be sure to use language accessible to a general audience without a statistics background. Limit your answer to at most six sentences.