Secret #101 Thank God for Nap Research...

Being caught napping may be stressful. But napping itself may actually relieve stress and do the heart good, researchers have found.

Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Mass. and the Univer­sity of Athens Medical School in Greece found that midday naps, also called sies­tas, reduced heart disease death risk by about a third.

Naps may help the heart by relieving stress, researchers say, noting that a study found the effect strongest among workers. The researchers studied 23,681 people in Greece who, at the outset, had no past strokes, cancer or coronary heart disease—the most frequent cause of heart-related deaths, including heart at­tack, the most common cause of death in most western countries.

The scientists tracked participants for over six years on average.

Siestas are common in the Mediterranean area, where heart disease death rates are low. Some prior studies had looked at the link, but this was the first large prospective study of people who were healthy at the start, the researchers said. A prospective study is one whose participants are identified, then followed forward in time.

The study was also the first to control in detail for risk factors such as diet and physical activity, the investigators said. The findings appear in the Feb. 12 issue of the research journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

People who napped at least three times weekly for half an hour on average had a 37 percent lower coronary mortality than non-nappers, the scientists reported. Siestas’ apparent protective effect was strongest among working men, the scien tists said; working women had too few deaths to allow firm conclusions.

Past studies have found that the sleep-health relationship is com plex. For in stance, a paper in the February, 2002 is sue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry suggested that excessive sleep actually increases mortality, and the best survival was found among those who slept seven hours nightly. But that study focused on night sleep, not after noon naps.

The new study’s authors said an after noon siesta may help the heart by alleviating stress. Past research has also found that an after noon nap boosts productivity. Di­mitrios Trichopoulos, senior author of the new study, said he’ll stop short of offer­ing any recommendations based on it, “until it is confirmed.” But if you’ve been nap ping, keep doing so, he suggested.

From:
Study: Naps may cut heart deaths

Feb. 12, 2007
Special to World Science