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Afternoon Naps
Getting sleepy? Take a nap for your heart! This seems to say that our
bio-rhythm needs unwinding, or pressure release, as in a clock.
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Afternoon Naps May Boost Heart Health
12 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service
- Roxanne Khamsi
The next health trend might come out of nursery school
instead of the gym: A study of nearly 24,000 people found that those
who regularly took midday naps were nearly 40% less likely to die from
heart disease than non-nappers.
Researchers suggest that siestas might protect the heart by lowering
levels of stress hormones.
Dimitrios Trichopoulos at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston,
Massachusetts, US, and colleagues recruited about 24,000 volunteers
between the ages of 20 and 86, in Greece, who had no history of heart
disease, stroke or cancer. The researchers collected information about
the participants’ napping habits and followed them for six years, on
average.
After controlling for risk factors such as diet and physical activity,
Trichopoulos’s team found that people who took at least three naps per
week lasting 30 minutes or longer had a 37% reduced risk of death from
heart disease than their non-napping counterparts.
Stress hormones
Those subjects who occasionally took short naps lasting less than half
an hour had a 12% lower risk than people who never napped.
“If the finding holds true, that’s an amazing discovery,” comments
Rajiv Dhand, a researcher at the University of Missouri–Columbia in
Missouri, US, who was not involved in the study. The results suggest
that taking naps might be just as important to protecting the heart as
other measures, he says, including eating right and taking
cholesterol-lowering drugs.The apparent protective effect of these
siestas was more pronounced among working individuals than retirees.
The researchers suggest that the naps might boost heart health by
keeping levels of stress hormone in check.
They add that this potential stress-busting effect might be most
pronounced in people burdened by heavy workloads. Previous studies
have linked high levels of stress hormones to increased inflammation
in the body and damaged blood vessels.
Earlier work has also indicated that taking naps can improve learning
and productivity (see Snooze your way to high test scores and Power
naps boost work performance).
Journal reference: Archives of Internal Medicine (vol 167, p 296)
Article URL:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11160-afternoon-naps-may-boost-heart-health.html
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The
The
Labors in the Spirits of
Science
Living on the Lost Planet 
